Pulse in the Pages
by mad half hour
Summary: Pitch wants revenge, and he's using dragons to get it. Their disappearance draws out Hiccup, a beloved children's book hero who has sworn to protect them. The help would be appreciated, if not for the fact that Jack can't stand the guy. As their clashing priorities threaten to tear them apart, Hiccup and Jack must learn to work together before each lose what they hold most dear.


**A/N—Okay, so here's the first part of my Hijack Big Bang! I'd had lofty intentions of completing this in one go, but school kicked my butt, and I didn't want to rush through this and leave my artists with their names attached to something even I wasn't proud of. And they really deserve something good! Just go to my page and check out the links I have listed to see what they've made. It's lovely and perfect and I couldn't have asked for better artists. They held up against my meager communication and irl responsibilities admirably, so be sure to send some love their way!**

**The fic's cover was made by Anguish of My Love, one of my two talented and positively spectacular artists.**

**Pulse in the Pages **

**part one: all the world will read you**

"'_This is Berk. It's twelve days north of Hopeless and a few degrees south of Freezing to Death. It's located solidly on the Meridian of Misery.'" _

Jack snorts, glancing over the pages of the book in his hand to shoot Jamie a skeptical glance. "Really, Jamie? You're planning to bring a children's book to college?"

"Actually, I plan to bring twelve. This series was an important part of my childhood," Jamie says, swiping the book out of Jack's grasp and dodging his immediate attempt to reclaim it. He rubs his fingers along the well-worn spine of the hardcover with fondness. "Besides, my best friend is _Jack Frost_ and I still believe in the Tooth Fairy. There are six year-olds who don't believe in Tooth nowadays. Bringing a bunch of children's books to college is pretty normal in comparison. I probably won't even be the only one."

"You've got to be kidding."

"Nope," Jamie replies. "Not even a little. They're kind of like the middle school version of _Harry Potter_, except a lot older. This copy belonged to my _mother _when she was a kid. It'd be weirder if I told someone I never read them."

"Huh," Jack sounds, shuffling in his sprawl across Jamie's bed to get a better look at the cover. The book jacket is missing entirely, and one corner carries the scars of a good gnawing from a teething infant. Its colors are faded in the way only well-loved books are, repetitively held and handled until pieces of the story are carried off on the hands of those who read it. "It must be a pretty good book to get so popular."

"_How to Train Your Dragon_ is amazing!" Jamie exclaims, flapping his hands enthusiastically and flopping onto the nearest beanbag on his floor (every dorm needs a beanbag chair, apparently). "It starts off with this war between Vikings and dragons, and the main character, Hiccup, he—"

"Wait, wait, wait," Jack interrupts, springing up so quickly he sends a precariously stacked pile of shirts tumbling to the floor. "Hiccup as in dragon rider Hiccup?"

"Uh, yeah, the first book is all about how he tames and rides a dragon," Jamie says slowly, tilting his head with furrowed brows. His hair is cut short nowadays, and Jack briefly mourns when the gesture would have sent bangs flopping into wide, bright eyes. How did Jamie manage to grow up without Jack noticing? "I thought you hadn't read any of them. Which is actually pretty weird, considering how long you've been around kids."

"It's not like I spend my time with kids reading," Jack points out, looking at the book with a newly realized distaste. "I think I know the guy it was written about, though. Hiccup Haddock, right? He _would_ have a stupidly popular book written about him."

"Are you telling me that Hiccup, a dragon-riding Viking straight out of a book series, is actually _real_?"

"The immortal spirit of snow and fun is currently helping you pack up for college, Jamie," Jack says, voice rich with amusement. "The existence of a dragon rider can't be all that surprising, can it?"

"I guess when you put it like that," Jamie says sheepishly. "Still, though, it's just…different, that's all. I heard about all you guys, like the Guardians and Cupid and everyone else, from stories my parents told me about, not from a bunch of books we popcorn read in our fifth grade language arts class."

Jack shrugs. "Whoever wrote the books probably got the ideas from some old stories passed down from back when people still believed in dragons and people crazy enough to try riding them. Besides, North has a million movies about him. Even I'm featured in a Christmas carol or two. Hiccup's book series," ugh, "is just unusually popular for our kind."

"This is so awesome!" Jamie exclaims, practically vibrating with excitement. "I can't believe Hiccup is real! What about all the adventures he goes on during the books? Like defeating the Green Death, or Drago and his dragon army? And did he actually lose a leg? How big is Toothless? Oh my God, please tell me that Toothless is real too, because one of them being real and the other being made up would just be—"

"Cool down there, kiddo, or you're going to make my ears fall off."

Inwardly, Jack tamps down on his desire to rant about just how unfair it is that Hiccup has managed to get his claws into Jamie without ever having met him. Jamie is allowed to hero worship whoever he wants. Even if his fancy new idol is a stuck up, glorified dragon herder. In Jack's humble opinion, of course.

"How can I calm down when you just dropped a bomb like the confirmation of actual, live dragons and a guy epic enough to ride them on me?"

"What if I offer you a bribe? Kids like bribes, right?"

Anything to get him to stop talking about Hiccup with _that_ light in his eyes. The last thing Jack wants to do is be strong-armed into introducing Jamie to Hiccup. Then he'd have to explain that he _can't_, because Hiccup doesn't lower himself to human things, like greetings or polite conversation, or acknowledgment of anything other than the dragons he spends his time mother-henning. Tarnishing Jamie's rose-tinted view of all things magical is the last thing Jack wants to spend the summer doing.

"I'm eighteen years old, you jerk," Jamie says, punctuating his words with a balled up algebra test tossed at Jack's face. Jamie's got a deft hand from years of baseball and impromptu snowball fights, and the makeshift projectile smacks Jack dead on. It's all very mature. "You can't placate me with candy, anymore."

"Oh, well, I guess high and mighty college students are too grown up to be interested in dragon scales," Jack says nonchalantly. "Maybe Sophie will want some. Is she a dragon kind of girl, or do her interests fall more into the wolf or horse spectrum?"

"You have dragon scales?" Jamie asks, crowding into Jack's space eagerly.

"Not right now," Jack says, smiling mischievously. "But I know where to get some."

* * *

><p>There is ash on his tongue. It sticks there as he swallows, moving down his throat gritty and thick, clinging to his teeth and the roof of his mouth. The air in front of him wavers with the heat blazing around him, like he's looking at the world through water. Somehow, though he can't see it, he knows that the village —his home- is on fire. He thinks he should be concerned, but there is a hand in his, small but strong, and calloused fingers are brushing the webbing of his thumb in a steady, soothing rhythm. With every stroke, a little more of his worry burns away, stoking the warmth in his heart.<p>

"It's been a while," the woman says, squeezing his hand. In reprimand or reassurance, he does not know. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were avoiding me."

He tries to speak, but finds that his throat won't even tense with the attempt, as though his thoughts can go no further than his head. It doesn't matter much, he supposes, lingering on the feel of her fingers turning his head, sweeping through his hair and brushing the shell of his ear. Even if he could speak, he doesn't have the first clue what he would say to her. What do you say to someone you don't know who treats you so familiarly?

They move to sit together, in the middle of smoke and encroaching flame, using smoldering wreckage like chairs. She presses against his side, and heat blazes everywhere she touches, a scorching line all the way up his ribs and spine. His insides shiver pleasantly.

"Oh, Hiccup," she says, her voice the sigh of a summer breeze, "what am I going to do with you?" Her fingers card through his hair again, and set to work, parting it and weaving a braid behind his ear with calm efficiency. "You were always so difficult, so stubborn," she adds, warm and fond. "I guess some things really do stay the same, no matter how much everything else has changed. Why would you be any different?"

He doesn't understand, but everything is hazy at this point, like her face behind his, or her hair falling over his shoulder in a neat braid. He should stop, should think about what she's saying, but he can't seem to find the motivation. All that matters is the heat crawling toward them, a ring of fire stalking forward like a slowly closing trap, and her.

Once she has tied the first braid off, she begins a second just below the other. This time, she performs her work silently, and bestows it with a blistering kiss to his cheek.

He doesn't know this woman, but he thinks, maybe, he loved her once.

"I think it's about time you start living again, babe."

He turns, and catches a pale face in his hands, his thumbs smudging ash on pale cheeks. She's a mirage in his grasp, shimmering and barely present, becoming more distorted the harder he concentrates. He wishes he could see her eyes. A smile presses against the side of his hand. It's the softest thing about her. He leans down, not sure if he's edging toward her lips or hunting down the color of her irises.

That's when the fire catches up to them, a blazing wall that leaves nothing of them behind.

* * *

><p>Hiccup wakes with a stifled gasp, face pressed into his pillow. He's drenched in cold sweat, and his sleep clothes stick to his skin uncomfortably. Heart racing, Hiccup reaches out a hand, and takes hold of the braids in his hair, tightening his grasp until the sting of his scalp matches the lingering sting of the woman's kiss on his cheek.<p>

The pain clears up any lingering traces of drowsiness clouding his thoughts, leaving behind nothing but questions. Not for the first time, Hiccup wonders who this mystery woman is. In his dreams, she always seems so familiar to him, the feel of her hand in his as natural as flying, or the feel of his prosthetic— a comfort and a necessity. If that was the case, though, why can't he seem to remember anything about her outside of them? Had she been a part of his past life? What was she to him? Obviously, someone important. Someone loved.

Why do these dreams even pop up in his head, anyway? They seem to weave in and out of his life at random, sometimes days apart, sometimes years. If there's a trigger, some sort of emotion or thought that sets them off, he has yet to discover it. He wishes he could. He's tired of struggling to sort her out, tired of straining for the color of her eyes and hair, the shape of her face and the meaning behind her words.

What could she mean by telling him to start living again? Hiccup has been living for over a millennium by now, literally (well, as literally as a spirit can, anyway) and metaphorically. Exploring is too innately a part of him to _stop_ living. He'd bet his other leg most people would claim Hiccup lives too fully.

Hiccup wonders if she confused and frustrated him in life as much as she does in death.

Ultimately, Hiccup chooses to mutter several choice curses about her and then drop it. He does this into a pillow, because he can't quite bring himself to actually put those sorts of opinions of her out into the universe. Maybe he can just tell that if she were still around to find out, she would have made him regret it. With a grip like hers, she could probably punch his lights out.

By the time Hiccup is straightening out his leathers and adjusting his prosthetic, Toothless is up on the roof and stomping hard enough to shake the ceiling. Hiccup snatches up a large wicker basket by the door and slings its leather straps over his shoulders with a jaw-cracking yawn. What better way to get his mind off of strange dreams and stranger women than with a good, long flight around the island?

"C'mon, you scaly-skinned heathen!" Hiccup says, grinning at the familiar face peering down at him over the slope of the roof, tail and hindquarters wriggling with as much eagerness as Hiccup feels. "Let's catch some breakfast!"

In the air, everything feels easier. All of his worries blow away with the shockingly cold wind that billows into him, and Hiccup lets them go with relish. Smiling already, Hiccup flips the mask of his helmet down and lies flat along Toothless's back, urging him to pick up speed with a tap of his fingers against the crown of his head. When you travel at the speeds the two of them have achieved, speaking can become nearly if not entirely impossible.

For a long time, Hiccup and Toothless feed their adrenaline addictions, pulling off increasingly difficult if standard stunts. The air is thick with sea spray and the smell of fish and salt, soothing Hiccup all the way down to his sea-faring, ancestral roots. They twist and weave with precision, bisecting a flock of Deadly Nadders migrating back to Berk from the Dragon Sanctuary further north. Stormfly, a particularly beautiful aqua blue and yellow dragoness he and Toothless are especially fond of, does not appear to be among them, and worry gnaws at his gut.

Sucking in a deep breath, Hiccup signals Toothless to dive. The wind whistles in his ears, and he focuses on that sound instead of the anxiety whispering in his head. He's sure Stormfly is just hunting. She's fine.

They level out to coast above the grey stretch of sea spread out all around them, Berk and its various troubles a tiny speck in the distance. Toothless decreases their speed gradually, and the sound of dragon calls and sea gulls, the waves rolling out to shore, begins to filter back into his ears.

"Okay bud, eat up," Hiccup says, scratching Toothless's jaw in gratitude. Their morning flight had been a lot longer than usual, no doubt for his benefit. Toothless always seems to know without being told when Hiccup has had a difficult evening.

Toothless catches fish and Hiccup is dragged along for the ride, bracing against the frigid dives into the water. They head back to the shores of Berk soaked, shivering and sated, with a basket filled to the brim with fish courtesy of a generous group of Thunderdrums.

Hiccup directs Toothless to the dragon hangar, the peace he had achieved just a few hours ago whittling away as they glide through the mouth of the cavern. Shadows eclipse the sight of an unusually sunny day, broken apart by torchlight and the rare shaft of sunlight that makes its way through. Up until recently, Hiccup had always thought of the underground stables as dark but warm, even cozy. Now, they seem like any other seaside cave, wet and gloomy, inhospitable.

Toothless croons, nudging him in the side with his broad head. Forcing a smile, Hiccup removes the basket of fish from Toothless's back, along with his saddle and prosthetic tail fin. Many years of oceanic adventure have taught the pair that leather and saltwater aren't good for each other or the scales underneath them.

"Thanks, Toothless," Hiccup says, removing his own leathers to join the heap the dragon has begun making. He takes a mental note to treat everything as soon as he's finished. Warped leather or a broken tailfin is the last thing he needs right now. "Let's get these fish to Hookfang and the others."

Anxiety begins to settle into his bones with disturbing familiarity as Hiccup follows Toothless up the wooden walkways leading to the Monstrous Nightmare stables. Nightmares, due to their size and their charming tendency to set themselves on fire at will or when dealing with an illness as innocent as the sniffles, are housed deeper in the cavern, where there is space and stone enough for stables carved entirely from naturally occurring grooves and faults. It leaves for a long walk and plenty of time for the helplessness of the situation to sink back in.

"Hey, Hookfang," Hiccup greets quietly as the narrow path expands, opening up into a row of large enclosures, all but one containing a slumbering Monstrous Nightmare. They twitch and writhe in their sleep, so obviously troubled that Hiccup's own body twinges in sympathy. "Good morning, girl. Time for some food, okay?"

Hookfang doesn't rouse at the sound of his voice. She doesn't even turn her head toward it. Taking a deep, steadying breath, Hiccup edges forward carefully, hand outstretched toward her large, horned snout. It dwarfs his hand. Hiccup hates that he notices that now, hates the way he can sense Toothless behind him, wings back and teeth bared, ready to defend him.

"It's time to get up, Hookfang," Hiccup says, voice louder but infinitely more gentle. He cautiously runs his hand along the foremost horn on her snout, applying more pressure as she continues to remain unresponsive. Something gritty rasps under his palm, and his heart leaps with panic.

A low growl cuts through his mounting concern, and Hiccup jumps back just in time to avoid having his hand bitten off. Between one moment and the next, Toothless has situated himself around Hiccup, pulling him back with his tail and wrapping his body around him defensively. He snarls warningly at Hookfang, heat already building in his mouth, the first trace of dragonfire.

"It's okay, Toothless," Hiccup says, petting him reassuringly with one hand while keeping the other outstretched toward Hookfang. He meets her hazy glare with his own gaze, keeping his stance and expression friendly. Her pupils are slit with aggression but clearly unfocused. It's not exactly easy to alter your breathing and heart rates at the drop of a hat, but Hiccup does his best to try. "She's not going to hurt me, right girl? We're friends, aren't we?"

Hiccup leans forward, pretending he can't hear Toothless's frustrated snort and bracing against the tail pressed against his chest. He continues to speak soothingly to Hookfang and inch his hand forward, ignoring the sting of the shower of sparks she huffs out.

Warm, dry scales brush against the tips of his fingers, followed by the slimy, apologetic sweep of a broad, forked tongue. Hiccup exhales deeply, scratching Hookfang at the base of her horns and keeping watch of her eyes. It isn't until the last traces of grogginess have fled from her gaze that he allows himself to relax, signaling for Toothless to do the same.

"Morning," he greets again, smiling sadly as Hookfang continues to whine apologetically, nuzzling the entirety of his stomach with her large head. He's never been more conscious of the fact that she could eat him in less bites than he has fingers. "Are you willing to try eating a few fish?"

Toothless nudges the fish basket forward, no doubt so Hiccup doesn't have to turn around and bare his back to Hookfang's jaws. Hiccup is nauseas at the thought. When did these sorts of precautions start to become necessary?

Hookfang eats like each bite is an effort, head resting on Hiccup's lap. The weight pins him down firmly, leaving no room for escape, but it's an oddly comforting weight nonetheless. For a few minutes, he can pretend that Hookfang is passingly ill, sick to her stomach and sleepy, but otherwise fine. He can pretend that it's a little bug common to Monstrous Nightmares, a bit of a hassle but perfectly normal, something a few days of rest and fish and chin scratching will cure.

Then Hiccup drags his nails along the underside of her jaws, and he finds black sand underneath his fingernails. Black sand like he'd found the other day, coating the floor of the abandoned stable two stalls down. Black sand like he's found on almost all of the Nightmares now, falling from their hides like shedding scales.

"Alright, Toothless," Hiccup says, rubbing it between his fingers. Hiccup rises to his feet carefully, cognizant of Hookfang's head. "We have to finish feeding everyone quickly. We've got a long trip ahead of us."

* * *

><p>The thing about dragons is that for being giant, reptilian fire-breathers, they are surprisingly elusive. As such, while Jack has seen them before, he's never really <em>seen<em> them before. That is, up close and personal, instead of from a distance with a healthy dose of preferably snowy sky between them. At the moment, Jack really wishes he could get back to the catch-sight-of-them-from-the-corner-of-my-eye place he used to exist in, instead of firmly lodged in the feet-away-from-being-cooked-then-eaten reality he's currently found himself in instead.

Why did he have to do something as stupid as go and promise Jamie dragon scales?

"Wind!" Jack shouts, scrambling back to the edge of the cliff behind him while keeping his sight on the bulbous, yellow eyes of the dragon in front of him.

The dragon clacks its blunt, beak-like snout like an angry bird. It tilts its head to the side like one as well, and overall reminds Jack of a draconian chicken, if chickens were ten times their actual size, and possessed talons the size of his hands, a mouthful of razor sharp teeth, had a tail lined with long, pointy barbs and could breathe a jet of bright, immensely hot fire.

Okay, so maybe it isn't all that chicken-like after all. It still squawks like one, though.

Jack pitches himself off of the cliff backwards, before the dragon can get another shot in. The wind is quick to catch him, tugging at his clothes and ruffling his hair in a distinctly exasperated manner. It sweeps him along at a brisk pace that leaves him briefly, exhilaratingly breathless.

"Thanks," Jack says gratefully. "That was way too close."

A second, even closer stream of fire sails just behind him, close enough that he can feel the fabric of the back of his hoodie singe. The heat eats through the cotton of his undershirt and straight to his skin. Way way waaaay too close.

"Wind, get me out of here!"

The wind all but yanks him out of the dragon's immediate range of fire, flinging him forward into a stronger current. Jack's relief lasts as long as it takes for him to remember that dragons can fly, and that his escape is actually just getting started. At least he'll have a good story to tell Jamie later.

"Come on!" Jack calls out to the dragon behind him. Its scales are primarily a very bright shade of light blue, with a cream-colored underbelly and chin, and a full crown of wickedly sharp yellow horns jutting out behind its head. "It's just a few scales! Besides, I took them from the floor of your nest, not your body. If anything I deserve a thank you for cleaning up your place a little!"

Apparently the barbs on its tail aren't only for impalement via a good tail whipping, if their being flung through the air like dozens of needle-sharp missiles is anything to go by. This time, Jack isn't so lucky. While the wind manages to tug him away from any unfortunate, spur of the moment piercings, several of the barbs tear through his clothes. They cut open long, thin lines along his arms, legs and sides that leave whole swatches of his skin stinging fiercely. If this is gratitude, Jack would rather go unappreciated.

"I don't want to hurt you, but you're not exactly leaving me with any other options!"

Jack scans the sea and sky around him desperately, looking for a solution, because he was being completely honest. He doesn't want to resort to hurting the dragon if he can help it. Not only is he positive Hiccup would hunt him down personally to feed to his giant flock in revenge, but technically the dragon isn't doing anything wrong. If Jack hadn't invaded its territory in the first place, none of this would be happening right now. Hurting it when Jack started things wouldn't be fair.

Plus, it really, really reminds him of a bird. Jack likes birds.

His eyes alight on a small, rocky islet, coming up on them fast. Behind him, the dragon shrieks with rage, and through the rush of wind in his ears he can hear the crackle of gathering fire.

"I guess this will have to do," he says to himself, grasping his staff tightly. The wind redirects him with its usual erratic grace, tugging him through the air like a kite.

The dragon's body is too top-heavy to abruptly change directions as Jack can, and is unable to avoid the stream of ice that Jack sends at its tail, freezing its barbs down and trapping it within a giant lump of ice. It squawks, surprised and infuriated by the sudden, frigid weight. To Jack's horror it begins to weave like a boat without a rudder, beating its wings frantically in an attempt to remain aloft.

Okay, so apparently a dragon's tail is more important for flying than he had thought.

"Wind, get it to the shore!"

Jack doesn't want to have to explain to Hiccup why one of his dragons was found in the middle of the sea with a frozen tail. The last thing he wants to do is make the jerk feel even more self-important than he already does.

Thankfully, the wind catches on the dragon's wings and maneuvers the dragon onto the islet Jack had intended for it to land on in the first place. Its landing is a little rough, sending a spray of stones and sand into the air, but it stands back up almost immediately, so clearly there was no harm done. Either it will melt the ice on its own or the ice will thaw within a few hours, leaving the dragon unscathed and Jack with enough time to escape. Perfect.

"Thanks for the scales!" Jack crows teasingly. Now that he's out of harm's way, a heady rush of exhilaration and mirth rushes through him. He laughs into the wind, wild and pleased. He just escaped the clutches of a dragon! Wait until he tells Jamie!

Another burst of fire, as bright and striking as lightning, streams from the serrated maw of the downed dragon, but Jack is too high. The shot peters into nothingness meters beneath him. He can't even feel the ghost of heat on his bare toes.

Jack leaves the islet behind him to the sight of the dragon flapping and stumbling along the shore, trying and failing to rise up into the air. The sounds of its cries echo after him, the distance distorting them until they sound much less menacing and much more pitiful. When he recites his tale to Jamie, he'll tell him the dragon was roaring loud enough to shake the clouds. He'd definitely get a kick out of that.

Excitement continues to buzz through him, shivering beneath his skin. He launches higher into the air, above the clouds, still laughing under his breath. He can't believe he actually tricked a dragon. Even though he's been a spirit for centuries, dragons still feel like the stuff of legend to him. The memories of bedtime stories involving knights and kidnapped princesses and fiendish, scaled beasts linger in his bones down to the marrow. Being so close to one leaves him feeling younger and more human than he has in decades, filled with a wonder that immortality tends to wear thin. It's one thing to know that dragons share the sky with him, or to see the silhouette of one in the distance, but another entirely to interact with them. He has a pocketful of actual dragon scales. He stood in an actual dragon's nest. He even flew with one.

Okay, so he flew _away_ from one, but still!

The wind nudges him playfully, dipping and rolling him about, sharing in his laughter and his excitement. Jack lets it move him around, relaxing into its embrace. It definitely earned the right to some fun today.

"When you've had your fill of goofing off, can you drop me off at Jamie's?" Jack asks. The wind spins him like a top, but plays with his hair in a way he's taken to mean 'yes'.

Somewhere between the spinning and the rolling, the adrenaline of his flight begins to fade, leaving behind the pleasant sort of exhaustion only a day spent in good, successful fun can cause. Jack allows himself to doze, confident that the wind will take care of him.

Jack wakes up in the middle of the ocean. Literally in it. As in, the wind dropped him there, like a sibling who wakes up another with a bucket of water to the face. His near-forgotten barb wounds throb fiercely.

"What did you do that for?" Jack shouts, sputtering around a mouthful of salt water. He fumbles for his staff, which is blessedly whole and bobbing in the water within arm's reach. He grabs it with a wet hand and treads water with the other. He can still feel the sharp edges of the dragon scales poking into his leg through his pant pocket, thankfully.

The wind buffets against him, rough and insistent.

"Okay, okay, you've got my attention," Jack grumbles, pushing water-logged hair out of his eyes. "Now can you please get me out of here? What if there are sharks?"

Not that a shark would actually try to eat him, being more spirit than living flesh and all. But still. It's the principle of the thing.

Jack is lifted out of the ocean and immediately whirled around. Above him, bright against the clear blue sky, is a luminous rainbow of colors, twisting along the sky like a ribbon.

Jack's groan is long and very self-pitying. Drenched clothes and a trip to the North Pole. What fun.

* * *

><p>For the first time in years, Jack feels cold. Not in the usual, pleasant way he always does, but <em>cold<em> cold, a frigid bitterness that burrows into him, slowing his blood and stiffening his limbs. He stopped shivering around the same time his wet pants froze. If not for the whole already-dead thing, his fingers, toes, nose, and ears would probably have fallen off. Before now, Jack hadn't been aware he could actually _feel_ cold.

Is this how most people normally feel? No wonder why Bunny is always in such a foul mood when visiting the Pole.

At least all of his dragon wounds have gone numb.

Just ahead of him, Santoff Claussen begins to materialize in the distance, the warm glow of its many windows cutting through the thick fall of snow howling around him. The familiar sight cheers Jack thoroughly. He wills the wind silently to pick up its pace, which had slowed about an hour ago, when his hands had gone so numb he hadn't noticed his staff slipping from his slack fingers.

As Jack makes his approach, the wind sweeps him up in a quick arc to hover above the ceiling. A series of increasingly dangerous attempts at dramatic entrances involving window-crashing (wind could never quite get the hang of unlatching them before Jack barreled straight through) had inspired North to open up a hinged skylight. To prevent break-ins, the window was fitted with a specialized lock, shaped like a series of tubes and activated by a very controlled stream of wind. Jack drifts toward it now, his descent the slow, cradled fall of a snowflake.

Warmth is the first thing Jack notices, sweeping through his frigid feet and hands and working its way up his extremities. He shivers, but inwardly thanks the hairy, thick-skulled people who first invented fire. Hopefully, it isn't something he'll have to do again anytime soon.

The next is the sound of laughter, and two voices speaking over one another. One Jack recognizes as the deep timbre of North, cheerfully and exuberantly interrupting a second, unfamiliar one. It is masculine, oddly nasal, and a strange juxtaposition to the story it is shaping below him.

"So, I come to, and realize that the two of us have been separated while I was out. All of my weapons have been taken, even my spare gas cartridges for Inferno. I look around, and see that I've been locked in a cell carved from stone, with a door of iron bars thicker than my arms—"

Something about this voice taps at his consciousness from the back of his mind, like the shadowy fingers of an old nightmare.

"Well, they couldn't have been that thick then, eh mate?"

"Ahahaha, you're hilarious, Bunny," the voice deadpans, almost drowned out by the booming laughter of North. There is the sound of something scraping across wood, and the man hums. "Thanks, Sandy. After all of the Snoggletog celebrations, I don't think I'll ever manage to acquire a taste for Eggnog. The recipe is way too close to yaknog for comfort." There is a pause, presumably while the man takes a sip of whatever he was given. "Mm, is this leftover mead from our last get together? I should have known you'd horde something this good all to yourself."

Jack slows his fall and hooks his staff on a nearby rafter, swinging around and into a crouch to peer down at the congregation below him. North is sitting at the head of the large, circular table the Guardians use during official meetings, dunking cookies into a mug of either milk or hot chocolate, knowing him. Bunny is in the seat to his right, looking, as usual, awkward and out of place in such a rigidly structured, wooden environment. He's grinning, though, in the sort of open, friendly way that Jack still feels like he has to work uphill to drag out of him. Opposite of him is Sandy, who is standing on his chair to make up for his diminutive height. This is only emphasized by the tankard he's nursing, which looks comically huge in his tiny hands.

The newcomer is sitting opposite North, back turned to Jack's inspection. He looks human enough, as far as Jack can tell, with a full head of disheveled brown hair that falls to the nape of his neck in a horrifically familiar way. His elbows are braced on the table, and he's got a tankard to match Sandy's raised to his lips. Something beneath the table stirs, something that sparks recognition in the back of Jack's mind.

Please don't be who he thinks it is. There are plenty of spirits that Jack has happened across in the last few centuries. Surely he's met a few brunet Norsemen?

"Anyway," the man says, wiping foam off of his lips with the crook of his arm, between the pauldron and vambrace of his leather armor. "I find myself trapped, with no way out and nothing to defend myself with. There is only one path that I can see, and there are voices, getting closer to my location. I know it's not likely that I'm going to get another shot at this, not when it comes to someone as ruthless as Alvin, so I grab the heaviest thing I can find to bludgeon them with: my foot."

His foot? Jack's heart sinks all the way down to his frigid toes. Oh dear MiM, it _is _him.

"Are you pullin' my leg?" Bunny asks. He waves off North, who is looking positively delighted with the direction the man's story has taken, if his eager shaking of Bunny's arm is anything to go by. "You used your foot—"

"To knock out the guard Alvin sent to collect me, yeah." Hiccup shrugs nonchalantly, like pulling off appendages and beating people with them are a regular occurrence. "I was only around seventeen at the time, so I was still using my older model. It was a lot heavier and without the rotational functions it has now, but still easy enough to slip off and hard enough to knock a guy out with in a pinch. So I hid behind the edge of the cell, waited for the person to pass, and nailed them when they looked in to make sure I hadn't gotten out somehow."

"This story reminds me of time before I became Guardian," North says, wiping crumbs from his mouth and beard absentmindedly. "I have told you about my time as thief before, yes?"

"Maybe once or twice," Hiccup says amusedly, posture suggesting just how much an understatement 'once or twice' actually is. Since when does he _interact_ with people once or twice, let alone enough to hear the same stories more than once?

Bunnymund leans back in his chair, rolling his eyes. "Here we go again."

"So you know then that I was one of the best, feared through the reaches of Siberia and beyond—"

"Jack, what are you doing up here?"

Jack startles, and it is only centuries of reflex that save him from an embarrassing plummet to the ground below, where four faces are now turning to face the ceiling. Well, there goes his shot at managing to slip in subtly.

"Uh, I was just taking a few so I could thaw out a little, Tooth," Jack lies, smiling winningly.

Her eyes narrow, and she crosses her arms. Jack recognizes the stance, and he braces himself to be called out in front of everyone.

"Hey, Tooth! How are you?" Hiccup slides out of his seat and waves with his mug. Mead sloshes over the edges and onto his hand and the table. "Oops, sorry about that, North."

"The elves will clean it up later," North reassures him with a careless wave of his hand.

"Oh, I wasn't expecting you to be here!" Tooth exclaims cheerfully, fluttering to the ground to sweep the man up in a friendly embrace. "How long had it been? One, two centuries?"

"I'm not quite sure," Hiccup admits, returning her hug with both arms, and deftly avoiding entrapping her wings between them. "I wanna say it's been about three, though. There was a flock of Stormcutters that kept going after your fairies, right?"

"Thanks again for taking care of that," Toothiana says, pulling back in a way that Jack has come to recognize and dread. "If there's anything I can do to repay you, say, a little dental work—"

Hiccup ducks her searching fingers, holding up his arms defensively. "I've told you, I'm happy with my teeth the way they are."

"But modern dentistry has made it so much easier to achieve a lovely, straight smile! I could even get rid of that space between your medial incisors!"

"Hey, I happen to have it on good authority that my smile is part of my rugged charm. Would you really risk tarnishing my appeal like that?"

"You, rugged?" Bunny scoffs. "I don't see it. Rough around the edges on the other hand…"

"I don't think you have room to talk, _Aster_. We're the same height! If you insist on pedaling such slanderous lies, I might have to consider calling the Snaptrapper I lent you back to the main nest."

Snaptrappers? Jack is definitely familiar with those. Shortly after the incident with Pitch, Bunny had decided to amp up his defenses within the Warren, and had gotten his paws on one of the most ludicrously well-suited dragons Jack had ever seen. Giant, four-headed and the bright green of new spring leaves, the dragon lies in wait for intrudes within Bunny's Color Garden. Each head has three jaws, which can be disarticulated and spread apart, giving off the illusion of a giant flower. They even emit the scent of chocolate to help lure in prey.

Jack had assumed that Bunny had seen it one day and hadn't been able to resist channeling his clearly Australian spirit, wrangling it into submission and giving it a new home. He'd even been looking forward to Hiccup barging into the Warren seeking retribution.

There goes that dream. Man, is anything going right for him today? MiM above, what did Jack do to deserve this?

"If you think you're seein' that beastie on your little island again, you're kidding yourself, mate. They love the Warren, and I take good care of 'em. Besides, who are you tryin' to fool? One look at ol' Bramblewing's puppy eyes, or Scaleberry dippin' her head in the river and you'll leave 'em just as they are."

"What kind of names are those for a dragon?"

"That's rich, coming from the guy who named his dragon _Toothless_," Bunny says, confirming Jack's building dread. "Nettlesting is much more intimidating than that. Heck, even Shrubbery—"

"Really, _Shrubbery_? She's a four-headed, fire-breathing dragon, not a bush—"

"I'll have you know she loves her names—"

"Cool down there boys," Toothiana interjects, flying between the space that had been rapidly shrinking between them. If the smirks on their faces are anything to go by, though, Jack doesn't think it had actually been necessary. Jack knows fun when he sees it. They'd been enjoying themselves. Why doesn't Bunny enjoy _their_ arguments? "This is hardly the place to start a fight."

"Alright, alright, we were just kidding around anyway," Hiccup says soothingly. He sits in Bunny's seat, and sure enough, Jack recognizes his thick brows and the round tip of his nose.

Today just sucks all over.

"Now, as great as it is seeing you again Hiccup," again, as though Tooth has seen him a bunch of times before, maybe even outside of her endless duties, "I'm on a very tight schedule. If this is just a social call, I'd like to know."

"No, it's definitely not," Hiccup says, posture straightening and expression becoming solemn. "I came here for help."

Well, when given an opening like _that, _how could anyone expect Jack to resist?

"I thought the great Dragon Master worked alone?" Jack asks, swooping down from his place on the rafters. He lands lightly on the side of the table opposite Hiccup, who looks at him with surprise. "Then again, I also thought he didn't have friends."

Let alone friends like the Guardians, of all spirits. Jack didn't know they made time for friends, before he showed them how much they'd been losing sight of themselves. For how long have they been clearing their schedule for him, when they never extended Jack the same courtesy?

"Uh, _he_ happens to prefer being called by his name. Which is Hiccup, by the way. Hi, oddly hostile ceiling-sprite. Have we met before?"

Have we met before, he asks. As if he hadn't taken one look at Jack and left him in the (metaphorical) cold to fend for himself.

"Not in so many words," Jack grits out, clenching his fist tightly around his staff to stop its furious trembling. "You've passed me by once or twice, though."

"I see," Hiccup says slowly. "Well, uh, sorry for that. I'm a pretty busy guy, y'know?" He laughs awkwardly, but tapers off quickly when Jack doesn't join in. "It's nice to meet you…?"

"Jack Frost, Guardian of Fun," he introduces himself, taking the hand that Hiccup offers him firmly within his own. Hiccup pulls out of the handshake with a wince, staring in disbelief at the frost climbing along his palm and vambrace. "Oh, sorry about that. I can't always control myself when I'm excited. I mean, you being such a celebrity and all."

"It's no problem," Hiccup says, looking more than a little knocked off balance, as though he'd never had to deal with dislike for a day in his life. He probably hasn't. "It happens to the best of us. That's a pretty cool power set, though."

Ahah, ahah, ahah. How many times has Jack heard that one?

"Oh, wow, that was one of the most unintentionally lame puns I've ever made in my life," Hiccup says, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. "I'm sorry I subjected you to that. All of you, for that matter. No one deserved that."

"You've had a couple a' rough months, so I'll let this one slide," Bunny says, cutting smoothly into Jack's building verbal assault. To his side, Hiccup slumps in his seat, looking visibly relieved. Bunny glares Jack down, as though Hiccup doesn't deserve having someone so much as sneeze near him too loudly. "Nice of you to show up, Frostbite."

Jack bites down on his immediate retort that he got here before Tooth, thank you very much, because the last thing he wants is to explain why he didn't just sit down with the rest of them. Admitting to creeping around on the ceiling, eavesdropping on conversations? No thank you.

"I ran into some trouble along the way," Jack says instead, which isn't even technically a lie, because he did. So what if it was sort of self-inflicted, and didn't actually slow him down getting here? He leans against his staff, making sure the stance emphasizes the rips in his hoodie and the clean, scabbing cuts underneath. They have, thankfully, remained numb, even as the rest of him thawed out. "I got knocked around a little, but it was nothing I couldn't handle."

As expected, Toothiana melts immediately, flitting over to ghost her hands along his arms. "Oh Jack, are you okay? You weren't hurt any worse somewhere, were you?" A few of her miniature fairies join her, clouding around his arms and touching his cuts so gingerly he can't feel the contact at all.

"I'm fine, Tooth," Jack reassures her, not bothering to resist as she continues to fly around him in circles and cry out at every newly discovered wound. "I can barely even feel them."

"That's because they're Nadder wounds."

"Huh?"

"You got them from a Nadder, didn't you?" Hiccup is leaning over the table to look at the long, deep scratches on his arms, green eyes stripped of any of the friendliness he'd been trying to drum up earlier.

"A what?" Jack arranges his face into something resembling calm, keeping his limbs loose and unconcerned.

"A Deadly Nadder," Hiccup says again, circling around the table to get a closer look at Jack's arms. He prods at the wounds with none of Tooth's care, and Jack prepares himself for the sharp, burning pain he'd felt earlier. To his surprise, all he feels is a distant sort of pressure. "It's a species of dragon that flings poisonous barbs from its tail in addition to the standard fire-breathing of most dragons."

"Poisonous?" Jack echoes faintly. He watches as Hiccup presses the pads of his fingers along the cuts, and then around them. Without the sensation of Hiccup's fingers on his arms, the action takes on an out-of-body quality, like Jack is watching Hiccup poke and prod at someone else's arm.

Jack had only wanted to get Jamie a couple of dragon scales. He hadn't wanted to die! That's the sort of thing a person only wants to experience once.

"Yes, poisonous." Hiccup's voice is clipped. "What did you do?"

"What did _I_ do?" Jack asks incredulously, tearing his arm away to cradle against his chest. "What about your crazy, fire-breathing chicken? It poisoned me!"

"Dragons don't just up and attack people because they get a sudden hankering to cause a spot of death and mayhem," Hiccup says. "They protect themselves. If you were attacked by a Nadder, you had to have done something to bother it. What did you do?"

"Uh, hello, I'm kind of still poisoned here! I don't know what takes precedence in Dragon Land, but around here -in _normal_ social circles- I think me getting medical attention is a little more important than your pet lizard's feelings!"

"In small doses like your case, Nadder poison acts like a local anesthetic," Hiccup explains impatiently, rolling his eyes. "You'll be fine, as long as you're careful not to do anything stupid and dangerous."

"Well, in that case—"

"Shut up, Bunny."

"Hiccup," North says, rising to join the two of them. His arm closes around Jack's shoulder, both a comfort and a warning. "I'm sure that Jack was only goofing off, and meant no harm. Sometimes he is trouble maker, but his heart is in right place."

Hiccup sighs, running a hand through his hair agitatedly. "Okay, sure. But he's going to have to lead me to it later, so I can make sure it isn't harmed." Does freezing its tail in a block of ice count as harmed? "And he should keep away from dragons until he's prepared to respect them. They don't deserve to be mistreated."

But Jack deserves attempted impalement and narrowly avoided third-degree burns? Where is his respect, huh?

Sandy, who had been sitting on the edge of the table, disassembles the popcorn bowl he'd been pretending to eat from and launches into a series of symbols above his head. The usual rapid-fire gibberish.

"I'm alright, Sandy," Hiccup says, because of course he can understand Sandy. He gives him one of the most pathetic attempts at a smile Jack has ever seen. Who does he think he's kidding? And really, Sandy? What has Hiccup had done to garner concern? "I'm just on edge. I've been trying to get a handle on my situation for weeks, but I'm at a dead-end here."

"We'd be happy to help you," Tooth says, smiling at Hiccup. "But in order to do that, we need to know what you're having trouble with. Bickering won't help anyone," she adds, looking between Hiccup and Jack pointedly.

"Right, you're right, okay," Hiccup mutters, more to himself than to the rest of them. He collapses into the nearest chair, a heavy solemnity overtaking his features. "A few weeks ago, a handful of dragons called Monstrous Nightmares began to get sick. They became lethargic and disoriented, and started refusing food. Species-specific illnesses are rare though not unheard of among dragons, so I didn't think anything of it, at first. I figured it was a bug, and that given some time and extra attention, it would blow over on its own. Dragons are nothing if not resilient. But then, they started to become more aggressive."

"So, you called a gathering of the Guardians because some of your pets are feverish and cranky?" Jack asks skeptically, raising a challenging brow when Hiccup glares at him balefully. "I think what you're searching for is a vet."

"Jack!"

"What does this have to do with us?" Jack persists, ignoring Tooth's protest. "You know more about dragons than all of us combined. If you don't know what's wrong with them, how do you expect us to? We deal with kids, not reptiles."

"Frostbite's got a point, even if he's expressed it like a grade-A whacker," Bunny admits, leaning further back in his seat as though to better take in Hiccup's hunched posture. "What's this got to do with us?"

"I was getting there," Hiccup bites out, gripping the armrests of his chair in a tight grip. "Three days ago, Toothless and I were making our rounds feeding the Nightmares when we noticed black sand coating the scales and horns of some of the dragons."

Jack tenses, and sees the other Guardians do the same. It couldn't really be Pitch, could it? He'd barely been gone for more than a decade.

"Then," Hiccup continues, oblivious to the others' growing suspicions, "we found an empty stall. It was unexpected, to say the least, because none of the ill dragons had been able to fly for weeks. Neither of us could figure out where it went, or where all of the sand came from."

"You said dragons were lethargic," North says. "Were they sleeping more?"

"Not at first," Hiccup replies after a moment of thought. "They seemed extremely reluctant, even though I tried to explain that being well-rested would get them better faster. Then, they started to sleep all the time. I just figured they became too exhausted to resist anymore."

"Did their sleep appear to be agitated or restless?"

"Yes. That's actually what first made me think that you could help. Or Sandy, at least. Between all the weird sand and the sleeping issues, I hoped that maybe he'd have an idea of what was going on."

Sandy nods grimly. Above his head, an all-too familiar profile begins to form.

"Who's the hook-nosed goon?"

Despite himself, Jack snorts in amusement.

"Pitch Black," North says, bracing his hands on the table. "We need to see dragons and stables immediately. If he's back, nothing good will come from it."

Hiccup nods, rising from his seat. "Toothless, rise and shine." A large, ink-black dragon with a broad, blunt head, stocky body, and acidic green eyes slips out from underneath the table. Jack recalls the brief movement he had caught earlier. The dragon rumbles deep in its chest and rubs against Hiccup's legs and stomach like a giant, scaly cat. "Okay, bud, it's time to head home."

* * *

><p>Berk rises out of the water as a craggy mass of hills, cliffs and stone arches, lined with wooden bridges and walkways. Grass covers the stone island like moss covers a rock, thick but sparing. The only plant life appears to be pine trees, which dot most peaks and thicken into forests further out, beyond the front of the island, where the village is situated.<p>

Berk-the-village takes up an almost circular section of Berk-the-island, where the land is flattest and most hospitable to buildings. Berk-the-island being what it is, "flattest" is essentially a moderate slope instead of outright cliff faces. The buildings are large, stout, and work their way up the main landmass of Berk at an incline, with rounded, sharply-slanted roofs to match the hilly landscape they are integrated into. A stone staircase leads up to the base of the tallest peak of the island, ending at a pair of enormous wooden doors set between two stone statues.

In front of the island, two enormous Viking statues stand vigilant, stone shields and swords held defensively before them. Their mouths are open in ghoulish, unwelcoming frowns, fire burning on their stone tongues. They seem to scowl as North leads the sleigh past them.

Everywhere Jack looks, there are dragons. Entire flocks of dragons roost on the statues' horned helms, all no bigger than a cocker spaniel. Flat-bodied dragons with two heads sleep on the ruins of what looks to have once been a stadium. More of the bird-like dragons (Deathly Adders?) sun themselves on rooftops, preening shimmering, jewel-toned scales with beak-like jaws. Thick, stocky dragons with wing-like ears, rotund, sausage-like bodies and rough, bumpy skin devoir piles of rocks on the distant shoreline. Beneath them, an enormous, narrow head easily half the size of the sleigh erupts from the water, attached to a long, thin neck. Its yellow eyes, as big as soccer balls, watch them as they follow Hiccup inland, spraying a jet of water into the air that falls down on them like rain.

"I don't think they want us here," Jack shouts over the wind and waves, wringing out his hoodie sleeves for the second time today.

"That was just a greeting!" Hiccup calls back, looking over his shoulder with a grin. He's a few yards ahead of the sleigh, straddling Toothless's back like it's the most natural thing in the world. "Believe me, you'd know if a Scauldron hated you. That water would have been boiling!" Then he laughs, because clearly the threat of a jet of scalding water is a hilarious and charming quirk.

"Have any of your other dragons been showing any symptoms?" Toothiana asks, perched on the edge of her seat so her toes can brush the ground.

"Not that I've seen," Hiccup says, gesturing with his hand that they should prepare to descend. "It's possible that some of the deep sea-dwelling dragons of the tidal class, or other more reclusive species have, but just aren't around enough for me to tell. I'll be able to check on the Flightmares during Aurvandil's Fire tonight, but for some of the tidal class it'll be almost impossible."

"Flightmares?" Jack laughs. "What were you thinking when you named some of these guys?"

"Sorry to disappoint, but that wasn't me. They were documented and classified by a Viking named Bork generations before I was born. Anyway, the dragon hangar is just past here."

Hiccup directs them to a wooden overhang and deck jutting out from the lip of a cavern, painted in shades of bright blue and yellow. As the reindeer clatter onto the deck, Jack can see that the support beams are carved with stylized dragons and painted a deep, cherry red.

"It's pretty empty," Bunnymund observes. He is, naturally, first out of the sleigh, hopping onto solid ground with barely contained eagerness.

"I've declared it off-limits to everyone except for me, Toothless and the Nightmares until this mess is sorted out," Hiccup explains, dismounting with surprising grace for someone with only one foot. "It doesn't seem contagious, but I don't want to take any chances. Anyway, the Nightmares are this way."

The stone is rough beneath Jack's bare feet, clearly left in its naturally half-worn state. They climb a flight of stairs before turning into a twisting but thankfully wide pathway. Whatever natural light that had managed to get into the front of the cavern abandons them. Instead, their path is lit by the flickering light of candle flame, provided by wall sconces in the shape of —of course— dragons. As the path widens further, transitioning into a large, open cavern, even those lights dwindle, all but two of the sconces extinguished.

An unlit candle appears above Sandy's head, followed by a question mark.

"The light started to aggravate them, so I put most of them out," Hiccup says, voice noticeably quieter as he approaches the first of a series of stalls. Behind him, North and Sandy exchange grim looks.

Inside the stall is a dragon with a long, thin head roughly the size of Jack's body, and a fanged overbite with teeth at least six-inches long. Prominent, baseball-like eyes track them as they step closer, hazy and half-lidded. Lips curl back in a snarl. Jack can't be sure in the darkness of the stables, but he thinks it may be mostly red, with large black horns that twist out behind it and mottled, winged forearms.

As Tooth brings up the rear of the group, the dragon stands on shaky legs and backs away, a trickle of something too close to magma for Jack's comfort falling from its mouth. It hisses when it hits the ground and forms a glowing pool.

Hiccup rushes in front of them, throwing up an arm to keep them back. As if any of them were insane enough to try to get closer.

"Give me a minute to calm her down first," Hiccup tells them, not taking his eyes off of the dragon for a moment. "She isn't used to company on a good day, let alone now."

"Well, I don't know about you guys, but I think I'm going to take a few steps back," Jack says, clutching his very wooden staff closer to his chest. In front of him, Hiccup is murmuring soothing nonsense and holding his hand inches away from a nasal horn big enough and sharp enough to pierce through his hand twice over.

"Scared?" Bunny mocks, as though he isn't stepping back into the corner of the room just as quickly as Jack.

"Fire and ice share a very long and antagonistic history," Jack says with exaggerated solemnity. "I'd rather not become just another statistic."

In his corner, where he is safely ensconced like any sane person would be, Jack watches as Hiccup neatly sidesteps a puddle of molten flame and continues to inch forward. His hand is steady and sure as he lowers it onto the dragon's snout, first with his fingers and then his whole hand. Slowly, he begins to pet it in rhythmical, strong strokes.

It is one of the most stupidly reckless things Jack has ever seen.

"You're such a good girl, Hookfang," he praises her, his eyes and voice going soft and gentle, the way most people's do when petting something smaller, furrier, and generally less lethal. The dragon —Hookfang— coos, pushing back into his hand weakly. "Good girl. Don't worry about these guys, okay? They're here to help you."

"Is it safe to approach?" North asks, eyeing Hookfang warily. She returns the look ten-fold.

"She should be fine now." Hiccup is still petting her, his hands scant inches from her teeth.

Tooth approaches first, fluttering next to Hiccup and smiling up at him. "She's lovely."

Hiccup returns the smile with one of his own. It is every bit as crooked as Tooth had implied it to be. "You should see her when she's well."

Jack hangs back as the rest of the group steps forward with varying degrees of caution. Bunny, for example, could probably be beaten to the thing by a snail, while North bounds forward so quickly he nearly steps in the cooling puddle of molten dragon spittle. One dragon fight is more than enough for him today, thank you very much. He's just starting to get feeling back in his arms.

"When did the sand first begin to appear on Hookfang?" North scratches the base of her horn until he has produced a palm-full of the dark, shimmering grit.

"I found it this morning." Hiccup grimaces, his hand coming to rest just behind Hookfang's cloudy yellow eyes. "Between that and realizing that Deathknell disappeared, I decided it was time to seek outside help."

"You made right choice," North assures, pouring his handful of sand into Sand's cupped palms.

A full-body shiver racks his small frame, golden lightning bolt symbols striking him from above.

"You okay there, Sandy?" Bunny asks.

Sandy dismisses him with a wave of his hand, absent-mindedly displaying Pitch's silhouette above his head while sifting through the handiwork he left behind. Jack can tell he's lying, because his face is tense as he moves it about with his fingers, lips twitching and eyes furrowed. Sandy is strong though, and wise as well, so Jack trusts he can handle what he's doing, and that it won't put him in danger.

"So a spirit's behind this after all?" Hiccup asks.

"Yes. He is known as Pitch Black."

Hiccup's brows furrow, and Toothless tilts his head and huffs. "Yeah, you've mentioned him before. But who is he?"

"Have you really never heard of the boogie man? I mean, I guess you do live under a rock, but still. He's kind of a big deal."

"Technically I live on top of a rock," Hiccup points out with a shrug, effectively taking the wind out of Jack's proverbial sails. "I think I've heard about the boogie man, though. He's that weirdo who squats underneath kids' beds, right?"

Jack snorts. "Can you please say that to his face?"

"He is a spirit of fear, and the Man in the Moon's greatest enemy," North explains, casually ignoring Jack's commentary. "Ever since the Dark Ages, he has been attempting to return to his old seat of power, and we have stopped him."

"The whacker must be either really desperate or finally fell off his rocker if he's trying again so soon," Bunny says. "Usually it takes him a couple centuries to crawl out of his hidey hole, not a few years."

"If he's _your _enemy why is he targeting my dragons? I've barely even heard of the guy, let alone gotten in the way of one of his latest and greatest assaults on all things Good."

"We couldn't tell you," Tooth says, "But Pitch doesn't do anything unless there's a bigger purpose behind it. If he's making your dragons sick, he has to be doing it for a reason."

"She's right," Bunny agrees. "Makin' a couple of dragons sick and irritable isn't Pitch's endgame. This is the start a' something much bigger."

Hiccup runs a hand over his face with a drawn-out groan. "Of course it is," he mumbles into his palm. "And here I was just starting to think I'd managed to successfully pull of retirement from heroics. Okay then. When do you think he'll kick things off?"

"We couldn't tell you that either," Tooth says slowly, exchanging wide-eyed looks with North and Bunnymund. She flutters to Hiccup's height and puts a hand on his shoulder. "You know we aren't expecting you to fight him, right? Pitch is the responsibility of the Guardians, even if his victims aren't children. This isn't your battle."

"He's hurting dragons, isn't he?" Hiccup says, straightening from his exaggerated slump and looking into Tooth's eyes with determination. "I don't care if he's normally under the Guardians' jurisdiction, or whatever other rules you guys might have about him. Keeping the dragons of the world safe is _my_ responsibility, and if he's the one who has been hurting my flock, then taking him out is my responsibility as well. He's already made this battle mine, whether you want me to be a part of it or not."

Bunny holds up his hands in placation. "Don't get us wrong, mate. We aren't tryin' to tell you that you can't fight with us if that's really what you want to do. We just don't want you to think that this is something you have to do if you really don't want to. It's like you've said— you left heroics behind a long time ago."

"Not to mention anything vaguely humanoid with a pulse," Jack adds.

To his surprise, North only nods in agreement. "Jack is right. You have not involved yourself with humanity in much time. You have never said as much, but one does not shut themselves off from the world without having their reasons." With his arms crossed he seems even larger than his already substantial size. His eyes, usually crinkled with laughter, are serious, his gaze a heavy weight. "With Pitch, humanity is always going to be part of equation. Are you sure you wish to deal with such things again, after spending so many years doing your best to avoid them?"

"If that's what it comes to, then yes." Toothless croons, nudging his head underneath Hiccup's hand and pressing into his hip as though to brace him. From what? The thought of being bombarded by his hordes of young, wide-eyed fans? "Toothless and I take care of our own, no matter what."

"It almost certainly will," North presses. "And once you have made an enemy of Pitch, it is unlikely that he will leave you alone in the future."

"Yes, okay, I get it," Hiccup says. "Pitch bullies people that can't even see him and holds grudges longer than a dragon with a stolen horde. If I start on this quest there's no going back to how things were before, yada yada yada. I'm absolutely, one hundred percent sure about taking him on anyway. No one messes with our flock. Right, Toothless?"

Toothless takes in Hiccup's face for a moment -looking way more contemplative and concerned than any animal has the right to- before he nods his large, scaly head.

North claps his hands, and it is as though he smacked the gravity of the moment between them. "Very good! Welcome to team, Hiccup!" North exclaims cheerfully. "It will be just like old times, eh?"

"I hope not," Hiccup says, an almost nauseous expression crossing his face. "I like to think things will go better this time around. 'Old times' got me killed."

"At least this time you're already dead," Jack points out absently, his focus on peeling his hoodie back from his sweaty skin. Why did he go into a dragon den at all? Obviously it would be too warm for a winter spirit, what with the whole fire-breathing lizard thing. Some of the fibers cling to the cuts on his arms as he yanks his sleeves up, and he yelps, abruptly made re-aware of the pain.

"Looks like the poison's just about worn off," Hiccup observes, leaning over to poke and prod at the inflamed skin without bothering to ask.

"No way," Jack says sarcastically, pulling his arm out from Hiccup's hands. He flinches at the drag of his calloused fingers. "Now would you stop that? Unless you don't think you have enough confirmation that my arms do, in fact, hurt now. Wanna get some salt to rub into a couple of the scratches, too?"

"Sorry," Hiccup apologizes with wince. "My hands must be calibrated to dragon-levels of sensitivity. I haven't taken care of anything without scales in a long time."

"No kidding."

"Hey, I apologized, didn't I?"

"For the prodding, yes? But for me being poisoned in the first place? No, you didn't."

"You were poisoned because you were bothering a dragon that didn't want to be bothered," Hiccup says, so authoritatively that Jack can practically feel his skin begin to itch. "It's not my place to apologize if it thought it was trying to defend itself. Unless it's sorry, than neither am I."

"How considerate of you," Jack deadpans, idly wondering how long it would take him to subtly rust through the springs of his prosthetic foot, and if he could pull it off without being noticed. Before he can be tempted, Jack decides to escape for a while. "North, unless we know exactly what Pitch is up to or where he's gone, I'm going to head out for a bit, okay? I'm no use here, right?"

"You can say that again," Bunny quips.

Har har, what a comedian, and so original, too.

"Until Sandy and I have finished observing this sand, you are free to go," North dismisses him, already running his fingers contemplatively through a handful of the corrupted dreamsand. Black and purple sparks begin to pour out of his cupped palm, scorching the floor as they hit the ground.

"Great. See ya' in a few, then."

Jack puts his staff over his shoulders and heads out of the hangar as fast as he can, snagging onto the tail end of the first draft that passes over him. The sea breeze is refreshingly cool on his skin, even if the salt makes his arms throb. A little pain is definitely worth being out of that stuffy chunk of hell.

Stars and moon above, why did Pitch have to pick dragons to mess with? Why couldn't he have corrupted a field of four-leaf clovers and tried to give a bunch of kids bad luck, or stolen the gold from the ends of a couple of rainbows? The leprechaun would be so much better to deal with than Hiccup, even if his accent could be a bit thick at times.

But no, it had to be him. It had to be the first spirit he ever saw. It had to be the first person who Jack looked at and saw looking back. If he hadn't resolved some of his issues with MiM (how was he supposed to know that Manny almost exclusively corresponds via _moonbeam_? How was he supposed to know moonbeam is a language at all?) Jack would have been convinced he somehow pulled this off just to get back at Jack for all the times he talked badly about him.

"Hey, wanna take a quick trip?"

Inwardly, Jack curses. Speak of the devil, and all that jazz. He turns as rigidly as someone being moved by something as fluid as the wind can be turned, glaring at Hiccup's sheepish face and hopeful smile. Please. As if Jack would just forget about him being a dick within the span of a few minutes. "A trip? With you? Probably about as much as you want to lose your other leg."

Hiccup's face doesn't fall so much as it slowly lowers itself down, his smile and eyes flattening out in tiny increments. "Rephrasing: We're taking a quick trip."

The beat of Toothless' wings makes it impossible for Hiccup to maintain a single position in the air, but the two of them come impressively close, moving about on par with Jack's own oscillating hover. It makes it much easier to refuse him face to face.

"Look, I know you haven't had much interaction with other people, so I'm going to explain this to you slowly," Jack begins, swinging around his staff and planting his feet firmly on the shaft, straightening out to stand over him. "Back in the cave, when I asked North if I could leave after our little tiff? That was me not-so-subtly taking my leave of you. In other words, I was getting away from you, and I'd meant for you to notice. Did you, or do dragons and the dragon-calibrated not grasp the concept of snubbing?"

Toothless snarls, but Hiccup only rolls his eyes and pets his dragon's head until he stops growling under his breath. "I'm not stupid, but if you're going to insist on insulting dragons to their faces I can't claim the same about you. Now is there anything else you have to say to me, or can we get moving?"

Jack tells himself that North would probably not believe him if Jack took Hiccup back to the hangar frozen and claimed he thought the man had been Pitch. He tells himself that several times.

"Where are you going and why do you want me to tag along?" Jack asks.

"Remember what I said earlier, at the Pole? The three of us are going to find the dragon who attacked you."

* * *

><p>The sky and sea are spread out before them like a canvas, a multitude of blues that run headlong toward the distant horizon. It is nearly cloudless, a rarity for the waters surrounding Berk, and the sun beams down on his back, warming him straight through his leathers. With luck, it will stay this clear until after Aurvandil's Fire.<p>

Just ahead of them, Jack swerves to avoid a wave as it pulls itself away from the choppy, glistening surface of the water. Hiccup nudges Toothless forward with a smirk, and the two of them race ahead, barrel-rolling their way through the narrow space between wave and sea with a cheer. They weave through several more in quick succession, sometimes maneuvering around the water entirely and sometimes crashing straight on through, taking in their fill of saltwater and sea air.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're a massive show-off?" Jack asks once he's caught up with them, circling Hiccup with a hawkish glare. "Because you are."

Toothless gives Hiccup a flat look and warbles, jerking his head as if to say, _Can you believe this guy? _Hiccup nods in agreement, huffing out an amused breath. "Seriously. Pot, meet kettle, right?"

"Are you talking about me?" Jack asks, clutching his staff between his toes to better cross his arms.

"How'd you guess?"

"I am not a show-off!"

"You've got to be kidding me," Hiccup laughs, leaning in to better feel the rumble of Toothless's throaty chortle hitch against his chest. "You totally are. Just look at you now!"

"What?" Jack throws out his hands. "All I'm doing is flying!"

"Yeah," Hiccup agrees dryly, resting his elbows on Toothless's head and his cheek on his knuckles. "And I'm sure being perched on a stick in defiance of gravity is completely necessary."

"Hey, I need my staff to fly! Not all of us can get a giant salamander to carry us around!"

Between one breath and the next, Toothless whips his tail around, knocking Jack off of his staff. He falls, swiping ineffectually at the air until he latches onto his staff, pulling himself back up with a string of muttered cursing.

"Toothless, behave," Hiccup chides while reaching down to rub behind the crown of his head where Jack can't see. The two of them exchange amused glances.

"Hilarious," Jack spits, pulling back in front of them and looming like a disgruntled parakeet on its perch.

Hiccup rolls his eyes. "Oh, come on! We wouldn't have let you fall. I thought you were the Guardian of Fun! You'd think you'd be able to take a joke."

"I'm plenty of fun when I'm not being dragged to my grave against my will."

"You won't get hurt," Hiccup dismisses with a careless wave. "Nadders are very friendly and well-tempered."

Jack tugs on his sleeves pointedly. "You don't say."

"Okay, they're friendly and well-tempered when you treat them with respect," Hiccup corrects. "As long as you don't step on their pride again, everything will be A-Okay. I'll make sure of it."

"'Cuz that's reassuring," Jack mutters.

Hiccup releases a drawn-out sigh, shifting to better catch Jack's gaze. "I don't know what your problem with me is, but if I've offended you somehow, I'm sorry, alright?"

"Oh, so you do know how to say the word 'sorry'." Jack snorts derisively, tugging up his hood and cutting off eye contact between them. "I was starting to think that maybe there wasn't a word for it in dragonese."

For a moment Hiccup can only stare, feeling like he'd been unceremoniously and unexpectedly bucked off the back of a dragon. Toothless growls low in his throat. His prosthetic shifts in the run of its gear as Toothless's tail twitches with the urge to smack Jack back out of the sky. Hiccup halts him with a gentle hand between his eyes and a small shake of his head, eyes still tracked on Jack's retreating back.

Every few moments Jack pulls down on his sleeves, fingering the holes the Nadder he ran into left behind. In his mind, Hiccup feels something click into place.

"Are you still hung up on that?" Hiccup asks, steering Toothless in front of Jack. He ducks his head to see under his hood, following his darting eyes relentlessly.

"Yes, I am still caught up on how unconcerned you are about my being poisoned by one of your dragons," Jack drawls. "How silly of me. I should clearly stop focusing on little faults like that and trust you anyway."

"It's not my place to apologize for whatever dragon attacked you!" Hiccup exclaims, leaning forward with a scowl he feels in every inch of him. "That's not me trying to be rude, or implying that you deserved it, or any other hostile excuses you've probably concocted with that frostbitten brain of yours. It's just me stating a fact. I didn't attack you, and I'm not going to apologize for a friend when I don't even know the whole story."

"I was flying around the sea stacks around Berk, looking for some dragon scales, and the thing attacked me out of nowhere." His eyebrows are oddly dark compared to his hair, which makes his scowl seem even deeper than it actually is. "What else do you need to know?"

"That's already more than I knew before, and it explains a lot," Hiccup tells him. He tries to relax his stance in the hope that Jack will follow his example, leaning back carefully. "Dragons can be very territorial. If you happened on one of their nests, they probably felt threatened and attacked you in self-defense. It doesn't help that you were collecting scales— a lot of dragons use them to mark their nests so other dragons won't try to lay a claim on them while they're away. Nadders are especially vain, so they like to keep the scales that they shed and use them to decorate their nests, too. You probably scared them. I told you, they wouldn't attack someone without defending themselves. Apologizing for that would be like saying I think it's wrong of them to protect themselves against threats when it isn't. Especially now, with this Pitch Dark guy running around, making dragons sick and planning who knows what else."

"Of course, it must have been my fault." Despite his words, his tone is considerably lighter, if grudgingly so. He pulls down his hood and runs his hand through his hair, not that the gesture makes it any neater. "Let's just get this over with, okay? The island I left the thing on should be just up ahead."

Hiccup follows Jack's eyes to an approaching mass taking shape in the distance, a small, gray shape that blends in with the horizon. It's easy enough to see, a straight shot forward, and eagerness thrills through his veins. With any luck, it will be Stormfly they find.

With a growing smirk, Hiccup asks, "Why don't we lighten things up a bit?"

"What do you have in mind?" Jack asks, glancing at him suspiciously.

"A race," Hiccup says, pulling up the handles of Toothless's saddle and leaning forward. He locks eyes with Jack, brightening at the competitive spark he can see catching within them, a reflection of his own. "What do you say? Up for a little fun?"

The wind howls like something wild, pulling Toothless off course and launching Jack forward like a slingshot. "Sounds good!"

Pressing himself flat against Toothless's back, Hiccup adjusts Toothless's fin until they're back on course. "Come on buddy," Hiccup whispers, "Let's show him what we're made of."

In the air, Jack moves like a bag caught in the wind, in unpredictable fits and jerks of fluidity, as though he's being held between multiple air streams and isn't capable of transitioning between them without becoming snagged. It makes for agile, respectably quick flight, comparatively speaking. If the race had been between tighter spaces and Hiccup and Toothless had had to restrain themselves to keep from crashing, he might have stood a chance. Their course is right on to the horizon, though, and Hiccup encourages Toothless to hold nothing back.

They rocket ahead easily, kicking up a trail of water in their wake. When they catch up, Hiccup nudges Toothless into a wide loop around Jack, reaching down to yank at his hood before pulling out beneath him and continuing on, chased by his angry voice and an icy chill that barely touches them.

Even though Jack can generate ice and has never brought up other abilities, it's obvious that he seems to have a connection with the wind, and not just to hitch rides off of. It rakes across them like grabbing fingers, pushing and pulling them back. Hiccup is constantly adjusting Toothless's tailfin, fighting to keep them straight.

Just ahead of them, an islet has come into total clarity. It is extremely small, hardly more than twenty paces in any direction, with an uneven rocky shoreline. Toothless snaps out his wings wide, stopping them with an abrupt jerk that Hiccup has long since learned to roll with. He lands on the islet beneath them with a gummy smile and happy rumbling, trotting over to greet the Nadder who had been watching their approach and trilling excitedly.

Hiccup watches them bob their heads in unison with a relieved smile, recognizing the vivid patterns and colors of Stormfly. He waits until she and Toothless have settled down to approach her, stoking her blunt snout.

"It's nice to see you, girl," he says quietly, pressing more firmly into the comforting weight of her head as she pushes forward, chattering against his stomach. He runs his other hand along her nasal horn, scratching at the dry base and dislodging loose scales. "Next time try not to chase after the weird ice spirits, okay? You had Toothless and I worried sick."

"Who are you calling weird?" Jack asks from above. He lands beside them, as light and nimble as a leaf.

"Who called anyone weird?" Hiccup asks, wrapping an arm around Stormfly's back in a loose restraint, beneath the crown of her horns and above the joints of her wings. She trills uneasily, shifting her claws and scoring shallow tracks in the ground. "Jack, meet Stormfly. Stormfly, Jack."

"Uh, hi?" Jack says uncertainly, rocking between his heels and the balls of his feet. "I see your tail thawed out. That's, uh, good, I guess."

Hiccup's arm tightens around Stormfly as she presses forward, sniffing the air. "What do you mean it thawed out?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Jack says easily, keeping a wary eye on Stormfly as she presses her head into his hip. "Whoa there, maybe you could uh, back off a little bit, Chicken Little. You're a bit close for comfort, if you catch my drift."

Hiccup snorts, letting Stormfly go entirely so she can nudge at Jack's leg. "She smells her scales. If you give them back and apologize, she'll leave you alone."

"Why should I have to apologize when I was the one who got attacked?" Stormfly presses in again, hard enough that Jack has to take several stumbling steps backward to right himself. He laughs, high-pitched and vaguely hysterical. "Kidding, kidding! I'm sorry about the whole home-invasion thing. It was an accident and it will never happen again. I think I've had enough of dragons to last me the rest of forever."

Hiccup looks at Jack pointedly, tapping his own pocket. "And?"

Something like worry crosses Jack's face. He turns pleading eyes on Hiccup, holding his hand against his pocket protectively, ignoring Stormfly rubbing against it with the side of her head. "Do I have to give them back? I kinda need them."

"For what?" Hiccup asks, leaning back against Toothless. Dragon scales are ancient things, as timeless as the creatures they come from. As such, their value and uses are so vast as to be uncountable. Jack was not the first person to take them, and he probably won't be the last.

"I promised one of my believers I'd bring him a few," Jack admits with a shrug. He flips one over in his palm, tilting his hand so it catches the light and sparkles. "I wanted to convince him that dragons are real. Show him some proof, y'know?"

At that, Hiccup's breath hitches, arrested somewhere between his throat and lungs. An old pain flares up, scar tissue stretched beyond its restricted limit.

"I don't know," he says uncertainly, no longer leaning against Toothless so much as he is bracing against him.

"He's a big fan of your books," Jack offers up, looking for all the world like he's holding out one of the few precious things he still has, a beggar presenting the last of his money to a prince. Hiccup's heart beats oddly, off-rhythm and too-strong against the cage of his ribs.

He wonders what his life would be like if no one read his books at all.

"Ask Stormfly," he says after what is probably an uncomfortably long pause in conversation. As much as he hates to admit that Jack's rude commentary holds merit, Hiccup feels out of practice when it comes to simple things like human interaction. He hasn't had to worry about awkward silences for more than a few hours a couple of times a decade or so.

"How…?"

Hiccup rolls his eyes. "Ask her like you would anyone else. Dragons are extremely intelligent. She'll understand you."

"Really?" Jack eyes Stormfly skeptically as she circles him, clicking in aggravation as he dodges her snout.

"Really," Hiccup confirms, crossing his legs prosthetic over foot. He nods in the dragon's direction, gesturing with his head for Jack to move closer. "Go on, step closer. Don't act afraid of her. Stormfly's a sweet girl, but any dragon will get nervous if the people around them are, and a nervous dragon is a defensive dragon."

"Easy for you to say when you might as well be one of them," Jack says under his breath, taking a small, calculated step in Stormfly's direction. She's still close, so it brings Jack a foot or so away from her. If he wanted, he could reach out and touch her.

"Good," Hiccup praises, noting absently that he's slipped into his instructor's voice as naturally as Toothless slips into the sky. "Now hold out your hand and let her scent you."

"Are you nuts?" Jack turns, eyes wide. "I've already pissed her off. She'll bite my hand clear off!" Uneasy, Stormfly chatters, clacking her jaws in discomfort.

"I have never witnessed a single dragon eat a human being," Hiccup says. "You'll be fine. You do want a few scales to share with this kid of yours, don't you?"

Jack blows a few stray strands of hair out of his face, breath heavy with reluctance. "Yes." He swallows so thickly that Hiccup can see the rise and fall of his Adam's apple, then reaches out a surprisingly steady hand to Stormfly's snout. Her nostrils flare, pupils narrowing with interest.

Without being prompted, Jack tentatively pushes his hand forward, brushing his fingers against the vivid blue scales just under her nasal horn. She jerks back in surprise and flares her wings wide.

"Sorry," Jack says with an exaggerated wince, wriggling his fingers. To Hiccup's surprise, he doesn't make a move to back away, keeping his hand held forward, smiling apologetically. "I should have warned you. I've got cold hands."

Warmth blossoms in Hiccup's gut as Stormfly tentatively places her snout against Jack's hand, nuzzling against his palm. A grin stretches across his face.

"So, Stormfly," Jack begins, shifting his toes through the pebbles and rocks beneath his bare feet. "I know I took them from your nest without your permission, and I'm sorry about that, but would you mind if I kept a few of your scales? I want to show them to someone very important to me."

Stormfly's massive head cocks to the side, more considering than bird-like. She observes his hand for a moment, which is still cradling one of her lost scales. After a moment, she nudges it back toward him, pressing his hand into his chest with an imperious roll of her shoulders.

"So is that a yes?" Jack asks, wrapping his fingers together, cautiously optimistic.

"Yep," Hiccup affirms, smiling as much at Jack's answering whoop as he is at the way Stormfly's tail sways gently side to side, quietly pleased by Jack's excitement.

Jack settles, stuffing the scale back into his pocket. "Thanks, girl," he says, a soft smile curling along his lips. Without the scowl on his face, he could even be mistaken for friendly-looking.

"Okay, now that that's out of the way, why don't we head back to Berk?" Hiccup suggests, climbing onto Toothless's back. Jack's eyes linger on his prosthetic as he switches between feet, swapping it out and clicking it into place. He ignores the look, reminding himself that Jack hasn't been around him for long and seeing something as radical as half a limb being replaced by stylized metal is something anyone would have to adapt to slowly. Most cultures aren't as desensitized to missing limbs as Vikings were.

"Beat ya there," Jack challenges, launching off without warning.

Hiccup shakes his head in amusement. "I don't know why you bother taking a head start when you're going to lose anyway!"

Toothless's body tightens like a spring beneath him, and then they are in the air, racing ahead with a deafening boom.

"Breaking the sound barrier is cheating," Jack tells him about a half-hour later, pulling up beside the two of them. Toothless snorts disdainfully, but otherwise ignores him, coasting along the expanse of the abandoned flight arena. "That's not even physically possible."

"Says the guy who generates ice and can somehow be lifted into the air by a strong enough gust," Hiccup deadpans. He shifts gears, pointing Toothless in the direction of the dragon hangar. "I'm not going to hold back in a race. It defeats the whole purpose."

"This why you don't have friends," Jack says.

"Oh, is that why?" Hiccup asks, unbothered. They may not be conventional, but Hiccup has literally thousands of friends. "And here I thought that had more to do with my hermit shtick."

To his benefit Jack winces, tugging awkwardly at his hoodie strings. "That definitely doesn't help any."

Silence descends on them, thick with an unexplainable tension. Jack fidgets restlessly, glancing between Hiccup and the landscape rife with dragons as though unsure of where to settle his gaze. Hiccup rests into Toothless's back, observing the sun slowly making its way across the sky, piercing through a stray wisp of clouds like a silvery arrow.

Nick is waiting for them when they land, expression grim and broad arms crossed over an even broader chest. In his hand he clutches what Hiccup thinks might be a snow globe without a base, though it shifts with restless colors as he moves it. Though innocuous in appearance, it draws his eye, radiating a quiet power that flutters in the back of his mind, ambulatory and quick.

"We must go, now," he says, before Hiccup has the chance to dismount. Holding the glass globe to his lips, he whispers something into its surface, and the swirl of colors breaks apart and rearranges itself in a wavering shift of shapes and shades. There are definitive images in its depths now, a mountain range interspersed with golden spires and domes.

"Did Pitch really attack the same place twice?" Jack asks, studying the image within the globe, a frown narrowing his thin lips.

"Yes." The answering smile North presents him with is anything but jolly. "Now, come. The other Guardians have left ahead of us, but we will be needing as many people in the air as we can get."

Nick tosses the orb in front of them, out of the hangar entrance and into the open air. Instead of plummeting, it begins to glow, illuminated by an inner light that builds and spreads. The glass shrinks, collapsing in on itself as the light continues expanding, a dying star brought to Earth's surface. When the light dies down a portal hovers in its place, a swirling rift in reality.

Without hesitation, North runs forward and leaps off of the wooden platform, diving into the void. He disappears, swallowed by the light.

"Wait," Hiccup says, catching Jack's sleeve before he can follow.

"What?" Jack snaps, tugging his arm away roughly. "This isn't really the time for questions."

Ignoring the impatience Hiccup can feel pouring off of Jack in waves, Hiccup gestures to the portal. "Where is this even taking us?"

"The same place Pitch attacked a decade ago—the Tooth Palace," Jack says scornfully, twirling his staff and jumping into the air, held in place unsteadily. "First he makes nightmare sand into horses and now he's hitting up the same places? He's definitely not winning any awards for creativity."

"When are villains ever?" Hiccup huffs.

"Enough with the witty banter already," Jack says, flying forward and gesturing for Hiccup to follow. "Let's get a move on. He may not be unique, but Pitch isn't dumb. He won't wait around for all of us to show up."

The portal flares as Jack flies through it, then settles back down. It stands in place, a hole in space spanning possibly thousands of miles. Surely much farther than Hiccup has been in years. He doesn't know where the Tooth Palace is, exactly, but Hiccup can't see Tooth tolerating the cold of the Arctic well.

Swallowing down his apprehension, Hiccup wills resolve to take its place. He may not enjoy conflict, and it may have been a long time since he has had to deal with it, but he's definitely not a stranger to it. There are entire books written about his greatest and most deadly confrontations. His family is being threatened, and he won't take that sitting down.

Toothless croons, looking up at him questioningly. If Hiccup asked, he would stay behind, even if it meant damning an entire subspecies of dragons. For Hiccup, Toothless would do it without regret.

It is this, of all things, that shakes Hiccup out of his concerns.

"I'll be fine, bud," Hiccup reassures him. He takes his mask out of the storage compartment of his saddle and puts it on, flipping down the mask. His breath sounds louder confined between it. It is a little faster than average, but steady, assured.

Between the narrow slits of his mask, Berk is all but cut off from his view. All he can see is the portal, and the sea and sky beyond it.

"Let's go."

* * *

><p>On the other side of the portal is an enormous mountain range, jutting all around them like a Stormcutter's open maw. They are immense in scope, dwarfing anything Hiccup has seen before, including the volcano the Green Death made her home, or even the crown of his mother's Bewilderbeast. The sheer size of their enormous gray faces, craggy and rough against the bright blue of the cloudless sky, takes Hiccup's breath away almost as surely as the ash billowing out of them does.<p>

For a moment, he wonders if there might be a volcano here too, something ancient and vast enough to protect the memories of the world. Then he flips his mask up, and his vision expands, a blazing nightmare in his periphery.

The mountains are on fire.

Normally, stone can't be made to burn. It is not natural, which makes the image of the flames belching smoke into the sky all the more unsettling.

Unnatural though it may be, Hiccup recognizes it immediately. The fire of a Monstrous Nightmare is nothing like any other dragonfire he has ever seen, after all. It clings to the pillars and peaks of Toothiana's home, bubbling and hissing as it eats its way slowly through gilded, painted rock and stone millennia-old like it was tissue paper. Turned to slag, it drips its way down the edges of the mountains and onto several large, circular platforms with immense central pillars, filling in free spaces and turning them into lava pits.

"No," Hiccup murmurs to himself, shaking his head in disbelief as a flock of strange, hummingbird-like creatures with too-human faces dart through the air, squeaking in fright as they evade the snapping jaws of Firewyrm. He roars, spraying a thick jet of liquid fire into the air to rain down on anything below him. "No, no, no. What are they doing here? Why are they…?"

A stream of flame sails toward them. Toothless rolls through the air, barreling under the arc with a high-pitched shriek. Plasma builds in the back of his throat, the smell of ozone cutting through the air like a lightning strike.

"Toothless, no," Hiccup commands, tugging on the handles of his saddle. "They don't know what they're doing. We can't just attack them. They're depending on us."

One of Toothless's auditory fins whips out and strikes him in the face, but the sound of gathering plasma dies out abruptly. Toothless grumbles at him, glaring.

"Thank you." Hiccup strokes his head, taking comfort in the sturdy warmth of his scales under his fingertips. "We've gotta get out of here and find the rest of the Guardians, okay? If we can find them, I bet we'll find this Pitch guy."

Smoke and ash float through the air, sparks flickering around them as they descend further into the mountain range. They sting, tiny bites of unavoidable pain against the bare skin of his face. He flips his mask back down with a wince but otherwise pushes the pain back, focusing on navigating through the unpredictable splash of lava running along the peaks above and falling down, threatening to eat right through them.

The mountains give way abruptly into free space that dips down like a valley. There isn't much in the way of vegetation, but the ground is covered in lush, green grass that seems out of place among the rough terrain around it. A small, deep blue lake cuts through it like a jewel, reflecting the flames and destruction behind it. Close to the lake are the Guardians, standing in a half-circle around a spindly, spider-like man.

"—already have what I'm after," the man is saying as Hiccup and Toothless descend, landing smoothly beside Tooth. She latches onto Toothless gratefully, favoring her left leg. Her vibrant feathers are singed and dulled with ash, her wings fluttering in fits and bursts. "Oh, look," he continues, "I see the reclusive hero has decided to join us after all. What took you? Were you admiring the work of your pets?"

"They aren't my pets," Hiccup growls. He does not bother to calm himself, does not bother to extend an olive branch of peace. The boy who let himself believe that madmen can be changed died with his cousin Snotlout a long time ago. "Now let them go."

"Why, I don't know what you're talking about," Pitch says, his voice the insidious whisper that runs through your thoughts in the dead of the night, loathsome and doubtful, digging into the nooks and crannies daylight hides. It rasps and seems to take skin with it. He is a stark contrast to the mural of Tooth behind him, lean and gaunt, hungry, sharp-toothed and cruel of face. "They can leave whenever they want."

"What's your angle, Pitch?" Bunnymund interrupts, a wooden boomerang fisted in each of his paws. He steps forward threateningly, unflinching when faced with Pitch's cool gaze. "Look at ya', you're a mess. Do you really think you can take us on and win?"

Pitch's laugh ripples through the air, echoing throughout the enclosure around them. It extends unnaturally long, too long to belong to someone in their right mind, and melds uncomfortably well with the crackling off the fire in the distance, the roars piercing the air and the terrified squeaks of the tooth fairies.

"I don't need power to beat you," he says at last, running a hand through his unkempt black hair. The gesture does nothing but loosen it further. It falls in his face in ragged chunks, as though it had been sawed through with a dull knife. "I just need time." A grin blossoms across his face like an open wound, gaping, jagged, and raw. "And my new friends, of course."

Hiccup can feel the heat of it beating down on him before he sees it, a rain of glowing magma spilling from above. Toothless reacts before Hiccup can even form a proper thought, pushing the Guardians out of the way with a swipe of his powerful tail and charging forward, out of range of the attack and directly into Pitch. He catches his thin chest between the claws of a single mighty paw and drives him into the ground, pressing down relentlessly, grinding his skeletal frame into the dirt.

"What did you do to them?" Hiccup hisses.

"Nothing that's not in their nature already," Pitch wheezes, still grinning his unsettling grin, a rictus of pain turned on its head. His fingers are long around Toothless's paw, the elongated shadows that tap on children's windows during witching hour given physical form. "You should know as well as I that destruction is the heart of every dragon's past, present, and future."

"You're wrong," Hiccup says. He pulls Inferno out of its holster and ignites it, pointing it at Pitch's bobbing throat. "Now _let them go_."

"I have access to the darkest parts of every being's heart and soul." Pitch's teeth glint like razor blades. "I have traversed the worst parts of a person's subconscious, encouraged atrocities the likes of which you could never imagine. You may consider yourself experienced, boy, but I am ancient. The most fearsome pieces of history across the galaxies have been penned in my honor. So believe me when I tell you I know monsters when I see them."

"Shut up!"

Hiccup can hear the Guardians somewhere close behind him, fending off the attacks of at least a dozen Monstrous Nightmares. Stray bursts of chill air slip beneath his leathers, but he's too tense to shiver, glaring down at Pitch's luminous eyes, shining like fool's gold beneath the light of Inferno's blade. Disgust festers inside of him, building pressure as it seeks a release.

Inferno lifts through the air almost before he can consider it, the heat it casts warming through his bloodless fingers.

Before he can strike down a wing slams into his side, throwing him off of Toothless's back. He hits the ground hard, rolling across the wet grass lining the pond for several miserable seconds before he's stopped. Mud squelches sickeningly beneath him as a heavy weight bares down across his chest, pinning him firmly in place.

"Toothless, hold your position!" he calls out, swallowing down a wave of nausea. He draws a slow breath through his mouth and focuses on the large yellow eyes glaring down at him, their pupils so thin they are barely noticeable in the growing dark. "It's okay. I've got this!"

Hiccup knows he does, because it is Hookfang's forewing holding him down, her claw held against the narrow sliver of bared skin on his throat. If there is any dragon he can get through to, it is her.

"Hey, Hookfang, it's alright," he says softly, drowning out everything except for the small space between them. "It's Hiccup. You remember me, right? You know I would never hurt you."

A snarl interrupts him, rumbling through Hookfang's throat as her lips peal back from her teeth. Heat seeps between her parted jaws, searing his eyes, drawing forth reflexive tears. It hurts to breathe, the air hot and humid in his throat, soft lungs held immobile against a set of ribs that seem so unyielding compared to his viscera, yet buckle beneath the force of a single dragon wing.

"This isn't you," Hiccup gasps, desperately attempting to wriggle his way out from beneath her. Inferno is still in his hand, but he is loathed to use it. She doesn't deserve to be hurt for something Pitch made her do. "You can fight him. I know you can."

There is no recognition in her eyes, though, no intelligence or reason that he can parse out. The scent of kerosene fills the air.

His arms feel like phantom limbs, as separated from his body as his left shin. If he's still holding onto Inferno he can't tell, his hands nerveless and limp. Hiccup forces one up anyway, fighting against the sharp pain driving through his arm as he does. He holds his palm out as best he can, trembling and pale. His heart raps out a rapid pattern against his bones, like someone's feet beating against the ground, running frightened from the shadows and the dangers hidden within them.

"Please."

A trail of thick, gel-like saliva trails down from her mouth to his chest, pooling above his sternum. If set alight, it could leisurely eat its way straight down through flesh and bone to burn out his heart.

Hookfang screeches in surprise, tumbling back as Jack suddenly rams full-body into her. Air slams into Hiccup's lungs with the weight up one of his father's war hammers. He gulps in greedy breaths until the world comes back in sharp relief, Jack and Hookfang facing off, their silhouettes set against the golden glow of the sinking sun.

"What kind of hero are you?" Jack scoffs, nimbly avoiding a stream of fire. He retaliates with a jet of air that brings to mind devastating winter, when even the people of Berk would hole up in their homes and build a fire. "You might as well have handed the thing a written invitation giving her permission to burn you alive!"

"She wouldn't have hurt me," Hiccup denies. Even as he does, doubt shivers through his veins, more frightening than the flammable saliva still shining on his chest.

"You are only fooling yourself if you believe that," Pitch calls suddenly, drawing attention back to himself. "I told you, at their core these beasts are monsters. Their history will always be soaked in the blood of the living, and try as you might, you cannot change that. Your attempts to tame them are nothing more than a bag of paltry party tricks."

"Stuff it, Uncle Fester," Jack snaps, rolling beneath another attempt to set him on fire and freezing her hind legs together. Hookfang appears to have just about reached her shot limit, coughing up a feeble trickle of saliva and sparks. "No one was talking to you."

"Well, if I'm not wanted, perhaps I should take my leave," Pitch purrs, a black cat slinking through an alley with a mouse between its jaws. The shadows beneath him grow and ripple, lifting off the ground and encasing him in darkness. "Come along, now, Hookfang. Be a dear and finish them off for me. I think that their time has long since run out, don't you?"

Toothless lets off a plasma blast that thunders through the air, sending hunks of dirt flying. Pitch has already slipped away, however, and all that remains is a smoking pit in the ground.

A thin, spiked tail lashes out amid the debris, catching Jack across his bicep.

"I've had just about enough of you," Jack grumbles, clutching his arm. Blood seeps between his fingers. "Let's see how you like it."

An arc of long, pointed icicles launch toward Hookfang like throwing knives, rending deep gouges across the thick scales of her tail and back. With every swipe of Jack's staff their precision escalates, threatening to slice through her wings or neck.

"Stop!" Hiccup rushes forward, knocking Jack to the ground. "Don't hurt her!"

"Are you crazy?" Jack scrambles to his feet, kneeing Hiccup in the chest. "They're Pitch's giant, scaly henchmen! If taking them out is what it takes to stop them from killing me, I'll do it!"

"Dragons under the control of bad people do bad things," Hiccup says, breathlessly. His chest aches, every inhale a sharp stab of pain, but he bites it back and continues. "She isn't in her right mind now. Putting her down wouldn't be right. It would be murder."

"Get out of my way," Jack demands, fingers tightening around his staff. His knuckles are white as bone.

"No." Hiccup firms his stance, looking over his shoulder and catching Hookfang's eye. She is observing them warily, licking at a thin, bloody cut near the joint of her right wing. Flying will be painful for her now. "Go," he tells her. "I won't let him hurt you anymore."

Hookfang lifts into the air on unsteady wings and roars out, calling the rest of her flock to her. The Nightmares begin to gather around her, abandoning their fights. They retreat as a single mass, dozens of wings beating the air as one.

Hope kindles in his heart.

Light erupts next to him, blazing and bright. He turns quickly, readying Inferno, but relaxes when he catches sight of the familiar rolling energy of a portal.

Then a cold, bare foot connects with his jaw, sending him stumbling through.

* * *

><p>"What were you thinking?"<p>

As soon as he clears the portal Jack plants his staff into the ground, springing up to crouch on its curved end. It puts him a good foot or so above Hiccup, who glares up at him as though it was Jack who had put everyone in danger. As if he had the right to anger at all.

"I was thinking," Hiccup all but growls, "that I was saving an innocent life from someone who swore to protect it."

"I swore to protect children," Jack argues, toes curling so tightly he can feel every ridge and groove of the wood beneath them. He can sense more than see as ice begins to crawl down the staff's shaft, cooling the earth beneath it. "Not the psycho dragons helping Pitch to endanger them!"

"Hookfang and the others aren't _helping_ him. He's controlling them! They would never willingly attack anyone!"

"Oh yeah, then what about all of the stories floating around that say otherwise? Or when Stormfly attacked _me_?"

"Those are _lies_," Hiccup denies. "And you know exactly why Stormfly attacked you! You stole from her nest, and she's terrified by what's going on right now. The whole flock is! She was protecting herself! How many times do I have to say that to you?"

"I don't think they are lies." Jack says it lightly, even though his heart is beating triple its usual rate inside his chest and guilt is gnawing at his stomach. He's seen Stormfly kind and gentle, apologetic and generous, and he shouldn't be dragging her into this but he can't seem to stop. That would mean that maybe Hiccup was right, but Hiccup can't be right, because he is an idiot who lets Pitch wind him up and would sooner let himself get killed than hurt the thing trying to kill him. His eyes are restless, flickering between Hiccup's glaring eyes, his clenched jaw and his left hand, which is still wrapped around the hilt of his sword. He licks his lips and presses forward, because Hiccup may do reckless things, but Jack has never feared treading into the path of danger and facing it head on.

"I think there are too many myths and too many stories for all of them to be hearsay, and I think that's exactly why you're so protective of them now. Why would you keep them away from the world if they weren't dangerous? Normally, I wouldn't care. You putting yourself in harm's way is your own stupid decision to make. But now Pitch is playing on their true nature, and you're so selfish and blindly loyal that you'd let him strip the world of everything light."

"You are wrong," Hiccup tells him. Tells, not says. He steps forward until he's less than a foot from Jack's perch, and even though he's leaning over Hiccup, practically towering above him on his staff, Jack can still feel the inches Hiccup has on him. "Pitch was lying. Dragons are innately good in the same way that humans are innately good. Sometimes, they go bad, just like humans sometimes go bad, or spirits sometimes go bad. But if that happens, I deal with it. I lost my leg protecting my people from a dragon that went bad. So no, I'm not being blindly loyal. If these dragons were working with Pitch of their own volition, I would deal with them in whatever means necessary, but that's not what's going on here. I'm protecting my own from people who are so invested in their own goals, they're willing to make sacrifices that I never agreed to."

Disgust crashes through him, so strongly Jack feels it like a physical weight slamming into him. His lips curl into a sneer. "Your own? You're a spirit, like _us_! Before you died, you were human, like the people we're trying to protect! _We_ are your own, and you attacked us for winged lizards! They're dragons! Animals! Are you really willing to let the world end for them?"

"Yes." Hiccup doesn't even hesitate.

Jack stills entirely, shocked to stiffness. How can such a simple response contain so much vitriol and condemnation? How could a person declare something so terrible with such ease? Hiccup's back is straight and his eyes are burning, a dragon's fury crackling in their depths. They've never looked so green or so inhuman.

Before he knows what he is doing, Jack is catching the nearest draft of wind and swinging into an arc. His foot strikes Hiccup in the chest as he loops around, sending him sliding back several inches. As it drags back, Hiccup's prosthetic rends deep grooves in the packed dirt.

"What is wrong with you?" Hiccup asks, incredulous eyes taking in the spot where Jack had struck him. The center of his armor is coated in a fine layer of frost.

"What's wrong with me?" Jack laughs, and he hardly recognizes the sound of it. "What's wrong with you? How could you say something like that? How could you attack a person you said you were going to help?"

"I said I was going to protect my own," Hiccup says, looking at Jack warily. Whatever he sees must not be good, because he slowly draws himself into a defensive stance, adjusting his grip on his sword. "I'm not a Guardian. I'm not fighting Pitch for any of you or for the children you protect. My primary objective is the defense of my flock. If that means stopping you, I'll do it."

Jack swipes his staff through the air, and a bolt of condensed ice slices forward, striking the side of the building just behind Hiccup, hidden in the shadows of the setting sun. As it hits the ice rises in jagged lines. "Well, the same goes for me if it means protecting the world from you."

Hiccup's thumb twitches over the trigger of his sword, but he doesn't ignite it. "You don't need to 'protect the world from me'. I don't plan on doing anything to harm it. I'm not Pitch, and I'm not helping him."

"That's not how things look from over here," Jack says, moving in to take another swing at Hiccup. The shaft of his staff slams into his shoulder before Hiccup can move away, and Jack follows him swiftly as he does, clipping his side with the broad end of the hook.

"Get a grip on reality!" Hiccup shouts, ducking under a swing aimed at hooking around his throat. With a flick of his hand and a press of a button, the framework of his sword slides out and bursts into flame, catching Jack's next attack. Fire laps at the wood beneath the blade, and Jack stumbles back, feeling the burn deep within his chest. "We aren't fighting for the same reasons, but that doesn't mean we aren't still on the same side! I don't want to fight you!"

"Well that sucks, 'cuz I've wanted to fight you for a lot longer than this." Instead of moving in close and risking his staff again, Jack whirls into the air and sends a stream of blisteringly cold wind down from above.

As fast as Hiccup is on the back of a dragon, he has nothing on Jack when grounded. The wind hits him dead on and lifts him clear off his feet, hurtling him into the wall of the building. It shutters with the force of the impact, and Hiccup bounces off and to the ground. To his credit, Hiccup never once lost his grip on his pommel.

"Fine, you want to fight?" Hiccup gets to his feet slowly, pushing up on hands and knees. The flames of his sword make the growing darkness twitch and jump across his face. "Let's fight." Hiccup presses down on his sword for a second time, and a thick stream of bright green gas hisses out from the open maw of the dragon-shaped hilt. It clouds the air in front of and around him, obscuring him from view.

"Seriously?" Jack dives down, narrowing his eyes to try to get a glimpse of movement within the smog. "Are you really that much of a coward? Besides, you know I can just blow all of this away, right? Wind—!"

Another click, and the gas catches fire with a concussive boom that Jack feels in every bone of his body. Unready, Jack is flung to the ground, the air knocked from his lungs in a harsh whoosh of breath. He lies on the cooling grass for several moments, the first faded stars of the evening spinning above him as he wheezes, trying desperately to breathe.

"I'm going to kill him," Jack mutters to himself, getting shakily to his feet. He stills until the ground beneath him stops shifting, then heads straight for the closest door. "You hear that? I know we're both basically dead, but I'm sure I can find a way if I try hard enough!"

Apparently, the building behind them had been the forge. Its namesake looms in front of Jack now, a lifeless mass of iron and unlit coal. Hooks hang from the ceiling, suspending half-finished projects and materials and tools Jack couldn't hope to name. Among them, he thinks he might see a saddle, though it looks a lot more like a chair than the thing Toothless and Hiccup use.

"Where are you?" Unsurprisingly, he gets no response.

Jack ducks down to look under tables draped with cloth so covered in dust Jack would be willing to bet they haven't been cleaned in centuries. He weaves between a rotating pulley-system stocked with nothing but strange, rudimentary prosthetics he thinks may serve as hands. Just when he's starting to think he has nowhere left to look, he catches sight of movement out of the corner of his eye.

"Gotcha!"

His ice lights up, illuminating the wall he had so thoroughly frozen over, and a previously overlooked nook of space. Jack's grin is icicle-sharp.

"Well, I wonder what's behind here." Jack doesn't bother to move the curtain, hurtling forward, staff raised. As he does, something shoots out, whip-fast, and wraps around him, pinning his arms firmly to his sides and pulling him forward. His staff clatters to the ground as he's dragged, shouting and writhing, through the curtain.

He comes to an abrupt stop with his chest pressed against the firm curve of a wooden shield. From behind it, Jack can just make out half of Hiccup's smirking face.

"Let me go!"

"No."

"Let me go so I can freeze you solid one limb at a time!"

"If you're trying to convince me, you're doing a pretty poor job of it," Hiccup informs him. "I told you, I don't want to fight you."

"You seemed pretty eager in front of Pitch," Jack spits, planting his feet into the ground and pulling backward with all his strength. The rope doesn't budge, holding him firmly in place against the shield, but Hiccup does, falling forward and sending them both crashing to the ground. "Ouch! Could you be more careful?"

"You're the one who pulled me down," Hiccup accuses, resting on his haunches and looking down at him. "Now, would you just stop and listen? I'm not your enemy here. I didn't attack you to help Pitch. It was to protect my flock."

"Even if you aren't trying to help him, as long as you do things like attack one of us while we're trying to stop his plots, then you are. Not to mention, if you hadn't been so focused on trying to convert one of your playmates back to your side, and been more focused on the actual enemy, maybe he wouldn't have gotten away! You played right into his hand."

"Maybe I did," Hiccup concedes, fingers clenched tightly around the iron-plated edges of the strange half-shield half-projectile he's still clutching. "But what else could I do?"

Jack opens his mouth, protest at the ready, but Hiccup cuts him off.

"No, I mean it, Jack. What else could I have done? Allowed Hookfang to keep suffering? Let you kill her and the rest of her entire subspecies? If Pitch had taken control of, say, Tooth's fairies, would you blame her for protecting them, even if they were causing others harm?" Hiccup pauses, then asks, "Would you have even tried to hurt them at all?"

Words leave him. Jack closes his mouth slowly, and lets the tension drain from his body.

Beneath the crack of the shuttered windows at the front of the forge, light cuts through the darkness of the evening.

"Jack? Hiccup? Where are you guys?"

"We're in here, Tooth!" Jack calls back. He wriggles on the ground ineffectually, then glances up at Hiccup. "Uh, do you mind…?"

Wordlessly, Hiccup pulls out the knife sheathed in his vambrace and cuts Jack free, pulling himself to his feet. He re-sheathes it with a sigh. "Tell them what you want. If you don't want me helping you anymore, I understand. Just know that even if that's the decision you make, I'm not going to stop going after Pitch. If it means fighting on my own, so be it. I won't let him get away with using dragons like this."

Unsure of what to say around his slowly growing mortification, Jack nods. He can't believe he actually attacked Hiccup. There's an enormous difference between fantasizing kicking someone you dislike in the face and actually doing it, and Jack isn't sure how to deal with it.

"If you want to rest, feel free to spend the night," Hiccup continues, dusting off his knees and knocking chunks of ice loose from the quilted leather of his sides. "You can use any of the buildings except for the one at the top of the highest hill of the village."

"Why?"

"It's mine."

The words hold the sort of weight that only memories can instill, hundreds of years impossibly carried between sound and empty air.

"Okay. Got it."

The two of them stare at each other for another moment. Without the anger, the silence between them feels alien, vast and empty. Jack has no clue how to fill it.

"Frostbite, get out here, would ya?" Bunnymund shouts, startling the two of them into movement. "Unless you've killed each other, 'course. I'd be so lucky."

Just like that, normalcy settles in. Jack pushes his way past Hiccup and through the door, lifting off the ground to drift over to the rest of the Guardians, who are piling out of North's sleigh one by one. Toothless swats him out of the way with one move of his strong, broad tail, and moves past him, headed toward the forge.

"Please, you know you'd miss me if I was gone," Jack says, elbowing Bunny's ribs.

"Jack, where's Hiccup?"

Behind him, the shutters at the front of the forge swing back and forth, squeaking in the otherwise quiet night. Jack shrugs, forcing a smile onto his face that feels as brittle as thin ice. "Don't know, don't care. Now let's move. I'm dead tired."

* * *

><p>The sea is gray and shrouded in a blanket of white mist. Beams of light cut through the veil, highlighting it as it eddies and swirls, curling fingers beckoning Hiccup into the unknown. It creates the illusion of movement in the distance, something stalking its way toward him. Sea stacks jut from the fog like a maze of tombstones, topped with long, skeletal trees growing in confined clusters. Their foliage erupts above their thin frames in thick, circular halos of leaves, colored an array of rich yellows and oranges and reds.<p>

It calls out to Hiccup, knocking on a door that opens into an empty void, one steep step followed by a stomach-dropping free fall. It goes on for eternity, no Toothless to snatch him up, and no ground to shatter him apart.

"So you know who Snotlout is, but you can't remember me?"

Dream girl is sitting beside him hip to hip, looking out at the rows and rows of towering, watery tombs. Her feet are curled up against his thigh, knees tucked under a skirt studded with metal spikes and cinched at the waist by a belt of skulls. A large, fur-lined hood is pulled over her head, obscuring her face. She is clearer now than she's ever been before, fuzzy at the edges but solid. If she walks on the earth she could leave footsteps in her wake, an impression on the ground as though to say that she was there, tangible and whole, real.

"No," Hiccup admits, unsurprised that he can suddenly speak to her in the way only someone dreaming could be. He doesn't bother to lie to her. Somehow he knows without needing to be told that she knows everything about him, all he ever was and ever could be. His mind and heart are her home, his thoughts and feelings her possessions. The doors in him that are locked open at her touch, yielding and obedient.

"Typical," she sighs, nudging him in the ribs with the toe of her boot. "You can be so absent-minded sometimes. Being on Berk all alone with no one to kick you into shape is going to ruin you for good if you aren't careful."

"I've got Toothless, and Stormfly, and just about every other dragon in the world," Hiccup points out, pushing her foot back onto the ground. It stays there for a scant handful of seconds before it's back on his thigh, a small, warm weight on his leg.

"Toothless and the other dragons don't count. They let you get away with too much." Wind teases at her hood, pulling tendrils of her hair out from beneath it. Beautiful, blonde hair, as shining and bright as the sun.

"Maybe," Hiccup agrees.

"How is Stormfly?"

"She's okay," Hiccup says, shifting to lay his head against her shoulder, the metal of her pauldron cool beneath his cheek. It is a strong shoulder, used to carrying the weight of responsibility. It is built for swinging axes and sharing burdens and bearing the weight of expectation, capable, sturdy shoulders that have never let him down. "She's been a little shaken up, otherwise, she's alright." He smiles and adds, "She even made a new friend the other day."

"Really?" There's an answering smile on her voice. "Good. Stormfly's always needed a lot of affection. Hopefully whoever it is will stick around."

Hiccup grimaces. "I doubt it. The guy hates me. Literally the last thing he did was try to kill me."

"I think everyone wants to kill you every now and again," she teases, the hand she places around his soothing the bite of her words. "It's part of your charm. Now that that's out of the way, all that's left to do is to convince him otherwise."

"Convince Jack not to hate me?" Hiccup laughs. "I'd sooner try to convince an ice cube to stop being cold."

A hand works its way up to his hair, fingers combing through kinks and knots, lingering on his braids. The braids she used to put there, a part of his heart seems to know. "The Hiccup I remember could be very persuasive," she says. The words niggle something loose in the back of his mind, but it doesn't come free. He worries it like someone would a sore tooth, running over it over and over again until a lance of deeply visceral pain stops him. "Stop that," she scolds him afterward, because she knows exactly what he does, even in his head.

"I wish I could remember you."

There are warm tears running down his cheeks. They collect between his face and her pauldron, uncomfortably wet. When had he started crying?

"You'll figure it out eventually," she says, unconcerned. "Just give it time."

"I'm not exactly the patient type," Hiccup laughs, sucking in a shaky breath.

She snorts, squeezing his hand. "Don't I know it." There is wistfulness in her voice, a lingering fondness that wraps around each and every word. "Seriously though, Hiccup. Don't stress over it. There's a lot more important things happening in your life right now."

Hookfang and every last Monstrous Nightmare gone, an entire species of dragon under Pitch's insidious control. Pitch himself, taken off to do who knows what next. Jack, who hates him without reason. The remaining water in his eyes makes the world before him waver, the treetops shifting like fire, yellows and oranges and reds flickering like hundreds of swollen candle flames.

"You were important," he decides aloud, wrapping his arms around her slim waist tightly.

"I like to think I was." Her arms fold around him in return. His head slips under her hood, the two of them cheek to cheek. Neither look at the other. Into his ear she whispers, "Right now, though, it's important that you wake up."

Wind howls around them, blowing out the treetops in a terrible gale. It catches the words he tries to say, snatching them from his throat to be carried away on the wind, lost amid thousands and thousands of yellow and orange and red leaves.

I miss you, he says into the sudden darkness. I miss you, I miss you, I miss you.


End file.
